Wingless Angel
by Phit
Summary: A broken image. Wingless and sacred one, fallen in grace. A tragedy in thought, stained in existence. But there are two moments in the wingless angel: the breaking down, and the building up. Rating for graphic violence.
1. Scratch the Sky

Ruta Skadi, clan queen of the witches of Latvia, dipped her cloud pine branch lower in the harsh winds. If she were the sort to believe that weather could be something other than natural, she would have told her sisters to be even more wary of the object they flew toward. But Ruta Skadi knew things like wind and rain as well as she knew the soul that flew beside her. The Clouded Mountain jumped into view again in front of the flyers. At their height, not a mountain at all, but a distortion of metals and life forms forced into a space too small for them to both occupy only compromising in a decision to occupy each other. Metal shoots pointed at them and hovered on Asriel's assembled defending flyers before blinking violently and sending them hurtling into the rocky ground below. Ruta had seen rifles, mainly used by hunters seeking furs and oils. These were not the same. The guns of the Clouded Mountain were massive orange stained creations formed of rust and malice. She had never believed before that a weapon had only the intent to kill. Her own bow had saved her life twice during an expedition to a Southern based witch clan. Her bow had taught a tribe of Northern Tartars of their independence. The ring of tiger teeth braced on the crown of her head told of that. The weapons in front of her only killed. She saw this as plain as the moonlight and felt it as naturally as well.

"Sisters!" She wheeled in mid-flight and brought her cloud pine around to face the rest of the clan. They looked to her with compassion. It took much from a clan queen to encourage an event which all her sisters would not return from. But Ruta Skadi was passionate. Not because she was young and did not realize danger and chance, but because her love and certainty of life cancelled out any doubt she could have. Her sisters respected her for it. "Our world is the film of old. We do not live with the humans; we do not live with the bears. We live alone as witches, as we have for centuries and as will continue for longer. It has never been ours to partake in the business of others. But tonight we join the war. This war is not for humans or bears or the creatures that fly beside us and walk below us, this is for every living soul among us who wishes for the right to live. To this obstacle, many of our sisters have fallen. Across the worlds our sisters, yes, and even brothers; the men we take as lovers, and the children we bear to them – this Chariot, this horror; it's guns make them into targets. It's preaching sends us to depths we know not of and care not to explore. By this we have been condemned to death across the worlds, to rejection and forced slavery in others, in our own world to separation.

She paused, blinking in the wind while a few sisters let lose a wild yell. Her dæmon, Sergi, ceased his flapping and took sheltered landing on a protrusion from the cloud pine branch. She looked once more at the faces surrounding her; the stuff of passion.

"And, sisters, this is why we are strong. The Authority fights for stagnation, but we fight for change! We fight for something better! To war!" She cried, and began a howling ululation before turning and scratching a line in the sky toward their target – The Chariot, The Clouded Mountain, the home of The Authority.


	2. To be Angelic

"Balthamos," the Angel A'albiel laid a hand on his younger govern, "The Deliverer of the Faithful brings a charge to you"  
Balthamos felt his being soar within. The vision of flesh he projected shimmered in esteem, for A'albiel spoke of the archangel, Michael, prince of Israel and deliverer to humankind. "I will proceed at his request." The lesser angel replied with confidence. "Good." A'albiel smiled kindly, "Humankind has need of our messangers and our watchers, for their faith has dwindled and Our Father wishes for refreshment of the sins of those created. Balthamos, it is time for you to ascend to your station as bene elim. I am confident you will please our Creator and bring further glory to our duty in all you do. Go now to Michael." His tutor hugged him tightly once and held him back at arm's length. "Go now." He nodded toward the gate beyond them both.

Balthamos. Angel in name - messanger to God. He had studied with his mentor, A'albiel, servant of the archangel Michael, and praised the revelations of The Authority since his own creation. He was angelic - here he would find his closeness to The Authority and here he could demonstrate the virtue of Heaven through his own interactions with humans. And now he was to begin his station.

He moved through the areas of the Clouded Mountain not as the figure of angel he'd been taught to form for his eventual interactions with humans, but as the true construct he was - a being unlike any notion to be understood by the human mind, but more as a sensation of a being and a glow of affection which he felt inherently toward all of his created kin, and above all toward the Creator. The Clouded Mountain was expansive. To him it resembled home, with sensations and light and darkness intermingling to create patterns below the shades of solids which outlined the turrets and walls of the mountain itself. He took in vibrations which formed shapes and twisted until they moved away on a breeze. They left a path through the formation which he would follow. He progressed behind the vibrations, both leaving dark shapes resembling flowers in their wake. He turned and watched them shift as they did, cracking in their centers to reveal bits of golden floating light, seeping out slowly from the stigma and disolving away the dark petals. This was home. The Clouded Mountain must always build and create upon itself from nature, which was itself created by The Authority. It peeled itself into layers of vibrancy and coldness, echoes and stains; it encompassed the creation of the worlds by recreating itself each moment. It remained present always with not a portion of it slipping into the past before it was recreated upon itself from nothing and built again in glorious fashion into Home. It was the Creation, central to life.

In a moment he'd arrived. An awareness moved through him and he was before the Archangel. Balthamos took his form and bowed deeply to his superior. The Archangel received him and shielded himself for the lesser angel to withstand. 


	3. Walk not Alone

Across orange sands stretched a village; a city in its time, piled with horses and camels and persons living in such quarters as the stench of each twisted itself into whatever mammalian hair folicles it could reach and pored from them all to escape once again into the local populous. The poor of the city set up tents of animal hides and sun-scarred branches to protect them from the burning sun and occasional sand storms which swept away their stocks faster even than the thugs which preyed upon the city. The city's rich built houses of stone and a mixture of mud-plaster. Shammahah, a jewel of the civilized world. The local thieves, if they ever discovered their neighborhood's jeweled nature, would have prised it out with a knife before the sand could even soak up the blood of whichever unfortunate fellow owned it. 

Birds flew to the western canyon outside of the city, beyond the brush line and past the well. Carrion was their repast. On days of profound heat the city's horses threw themselves into fits at the rank smell which swept in from the west. They only stopped from exhaustion, foam splotching the corners of their mouths.

Raucous sounds flowed from the corrupt temple to the gods. Blood flowed too, but only on particularly celebratory occasions. Its carvings depectied revelry and drunkeness as prayer, copulation as an act of festivity, and sacrifice as a divining weapon of the gods.

The people of the city had abandoned goodness in search of pleasure and fortune. Temple was no longer an act of prayer and praise, it was a retreat to more devilish activities of untold sins.

"Enoch." Balthamos whispered to the air, testing the name of his watch once again. He waited in the orchards until the boy would arrive. He'd watched for a week of human time now, constantly following the boy, but never within view. He was a good child, the son of Jared on the Seth line of man's creation. He obeyed his father and tended the earth. Both traits seemed promising to Balthamos. Still, he was only twenty-three, and the early sons of man lived for centuries.

The boy approached, dark skinned and dark hair cut at the shoulders, he strode tall and strong carrying two large bundles under his arms. Balthamos waited until he laid the bundles under the pomegranate trees.

"Enoch." He spoke. The boy spun in place putting up a little cloud of dirt.

"Someone there?" His native tongue was strange, but Balthamos had learned it easily enough. "If you are here to rape these fruits, know you will find no mercy when you are caught." He paused and looked around furtively, ducking his head into the next aisle of greenery. "But," he resumed, "if you are hungry...you are welcome in our house. My father will lay place for you." Speaking his peace he seemed content and gave one last glance in between the trunks before bending down to untie the sacks he'd carried.

_He offers food to the hungry thief,_ Balthamos thrilled. _This is truly a son of Seth's line._

After the expulsion of man from the garden of Eden, two sons were born to Adam: Cain and Able. Evil collected its conscious early after the Fall and Cain slew his brother and denied The Authority. Adam had another son, Seth. And while Seth's sons and Cain's daughters married, this particular lined had stayed pure, untainted.

"Enoch." Balthamos took form near the tree line. The boy noticed and turned to face him.

"Mercy!" the boy cried and took knee before the angel, "Bene Elim, Holy one."

"Enoch, The Authority has taken interest in you." He waited for response, but there was none. Enoch burned to speak, yet would not dare. He would sooner end his life than stumble into the words of the voice of The Authority. "Your heritage has done well for you and your upbringing is one of purity. The Authority sees you have the ability for greatness, young one. He wishes me to bring you hope and guidance." the boy still did not speak. He barely breathed, holding his position on his knees. "My name is Balthamos," the angel continued, "and I have been sent to aide you in your path toward holiness."

"Balthamos..." the boy's lips trembled, he inched his hands across the ground. Slowly he tilted his head forward and up toward the angel. "Balthamos," he repeated. The light stabbed his eyes as he took in the angel's form. Brilliance and color, light from inside heating up the being in front of him. Glory in formation, the nearness of Heaven! His trembling arms gave out and he splayed forward onto his chin. "Forgive me! Forgive me!" he cried. "I am not worthy to behold you with my eyes! I am human and I am weak! Forgive me!" He pulled his dusty form back into a kneel and averted his eyes again.

"Child," Balthamos smiled kindly and reached down to touch the boy's head. "God has such deep love for you. As I serve Him so I have been sent to serve you. Take no fear in my presence, for I am to be your safety. We walk together now."


	4. Metatron's Cube

Lord Asriel finished pouring the tea and brought a cup to his companion before taking the seat at the table with her. It was too early to start back on the Tokay. 

"Thank you Asriel." Ruta Skadi took the offered glass and sat back into her own chair further. 

The two sat silently in the adamant tower for a moment. It was a chill morning but the humidity won out and Asriel had removed his formal jacket in preferance to an open-collared white shirt. The oversized table filled the meeting room, but Asriel had only this and his own chamber to occupy his guest in. He'd cleared the maps and charts to the other side of the table where they waited, ever anxious to find their use in the upcoming war. The only other evidence the room held to its intention was a stack of anbaric-technology which occupied the corner. The room was functional to a point - here Asriel held his meetings with his generals and councillers. 

The snow leopard dæmon Stelmaria patted a light paw at Sergi, prompting Ruta Skadi from her solemnity. 

"I apologize," she began, "but you speak of war, human war. I would pledge all the clans of witches to you at this moment, but I must consult my sisters. This war seeks destruction of The Authority; oppressor of humans, not witches. I've no right to oblige my sisters to this cause."

"You're wrong." Asriel picked up his tea and blew lightly on in before locking the witch in a gaze which she could not release herself from without his will. "I have seen your sisters, Ruta, sister from other worlds, not just our own." He held her eyes steady in his own and weighed what he would tell her. "They burn them alive; roping them to logs and setting fire to their flesh for this authority."

Her eyes lit as he watched the conflict turn within the witch. She knew he spoke the truth to her. Her head ducked and she looked back to him - eyes held solid. "Why?" she whispered.

"They are condemned, they are called the children of the devil."

"What devil is this? I know none."

"Then you know the truth."

"But why?" She demanded, thrusting herself forward in her chair, eyes blazing with rage. iTo kill a witch outright, to burn her in her own flesh, to force the life from her.../i In a bound Stelmaria's head was on her lap, comforting. Unhesitatingly she stroked the dæmon's fur.

"To keep life from us all, to steal away our happiness and vigor and force restrictions and obligations onto us, to make us into servants of a false master."

Ruta Skadi dug her fingers deep into the dæmon's fur. He had enchanted her in her own love for her sisters. She would fight for them. "I will bring my sisters." 

"I thought you might."

She smiled, not unkindly, and removed the snow leopard's head from her lap. "And what else, Asriel?"

"And?" He feigned innocence.

"And what other plans have you already conjured for our witch clans."

"You are fierce and brilliant, your beauty and passion -"

"What other plans, Asriel?" She cut him off, unwilling to cross ambitions.

Lord Asriel sat back and folded his arms, taking measure of his lover. "Have you ever heard of Metatron's Cube?"

"No."

He sidestepped from his chair and pulled at the charts and maps loaded on the far side of the table. After some rummagging, he pulled it out - not a chart at all, but a thick sheet of paper, torn with age and splotched with blood. He handed it to her.

"This document was difficult to obtain," she commented. "You have a difficult task planned for us, Asriel." 

Lord Asriel only stretched in response. The choice was hers. Stelmaria took vigal near Asriel and they watched as she read.

"There is a weapon, Ruta. Something of power in the hands of the enemy."

"But this..." she scanned the lines, "this is a process, not a weapon."

"Intercision is a process, Ruta. It still created an army for the Church."

"I see then." she stated simply and handed the page back to him. "You want our clan to obtain this weapon?"

"No. Just unlock it, find out if it's a threat to our cause, see if we can use it ourselves, remove it from the hands of the enemy. And not your clan. This isn't a device to be won in combat."

"Just me then."

"Just you."

iMetatron's Cube./i She thought much later as she took to the sky again to bring back her sisters and take in her task. The document Asriel had given to her was something from the cookbook of The Authority, but this recipe had lash and her mind rang with the implications. iIf The Authority could create angels, he would win. His army would be limitless, and he would be fearless. Countless angels would be pawned to his cause without a thought and inneumerable beings would take their places in the war. It would be a slaughter. Lord Asriel would lose./i 


	5. Baruch

This chapter deals with a birth, but despite that I do not believe it to be very graphic or explicit.

* * *

In Enoch's one hundred twelfth year, a brother was born to him.

Balthamos attended with the young man at his mother's side. The evening was late and they stayed long beside her, Balthamos invisible to her eye, Enoch with his hand in his mother's for comfort; constantly wary of the presence beside him. He was incapable of losing his awe in the presence of the angel, despite the being's vigilant accompaniment of Enoch. His father had long since left to visit with a man skilled in herbology, but the concoction was difficult to obtain and the herbologist and father had been searching all corners of their village, begging neighbors for the proper ingrediants.

So it was that Enoch and Balthamos attended to the woman, wiping her brow with water and assisting her in sitting up each time she began to feel restless in her state. The night wore on and Enoch lit extra lanterns and hung them near the doorway for his father's return. He was comforted with the extra light, despite the anguished cries from his mother. The ensuing birth terrified the young man, but at the same time it enabled within him a bravery for his mother. He laid his arm across her shoulders and lifted a cup to her lips so she could drink. He was determined to help her in whatever small way he could, he felt such loyalty to his parents in their purity of heritage which, as Balthamos had lightly explained to him, was responsible for his own purity and invested intrest from The Authority.

The night became darker and hotter in the small birth-room before Enoch's father, Jared, returned to his family with a small pouch in his pocket. He pulled a few leaves from the cloth and crushed them for his wife to chew on and calm her.

"You may leave now." He informed his son, not unkindly.

And the duty was lifted from his shoulders. Breathing out heavily, Enoch left the room and continued outside their stone-masonry house. He leaned against the wall outside their door, stiffly and shaking he turned his sweaty forehead to the quarter-moon and closed his eyes.

"Balthamos," he knew the angel was beside him now, though still hidden. He shook still but was willing at last to break the stiff acquaintance he'd developed with his companion. He'd been long curious about the angel, but awe of the sublime dictated he keep his small curiosities from the higher being. But this night was splitting particles of lightning in his being and his soul burned with questions. "Did you attend to my birth?"

Balthamos hesitated, wondering at the change in his watch. The man had never asked such a question of him. Enoch's interest in the angel extended mainly to a wonderment of Enoch's own abilities and methods by which to please the Creator. "No," he responded and took shape beside Enoch. "I have never seen a human born."

"An angel then?" The words flew suddenly and Enoch paled at his own question. "Angels are not born?" He immediately followed his words with an embarassed pulling of his hands into his chest. "I apologize, I cannot know..." he trailed.

"Angels are not born in such a method as a human. Angels are created by the hand of The Authority and from his own materials. Humans are created in a form ordained by The Authority and must remain human for their own lifetime. Both beings are tied together in their Creation by Him but we are seperated in our methods of birth and Creation and the materials we are made from. Angels are not human and they live no lifetime. Since the time man abandoned Eden in his own selfishness for God's love, life implies death and Angels have no death."

Enoch stiffened again at the clarity of Balthamos' response. He had expected nothing from the angel since they'd met such a time passed, he had never expected to hear stories of Creation, certainly not creation of a being such as Balthamos.

"And my lifetime?" He asked, not willing Balthamos to stop.

"You will die. All humans die, it is fate they sought in turning their backs on The Authority."

"But if we are able to turn strongly enough back into the grace of The Authority, can we re-embrace Eden? Would such a thing be possible, Balthamos?"

"It's not for me to decide that."

Enoch looked up to the moonlight again, this time not closing his eyes. He was content in what the angel had told him. Balthamos could not tell him a fate was ultimate for him. The Authority would ultimately decide if this particular child would die. He'd stopped shaking now and despite the heat his sweated skin felt cool.

Screams from inside increased and something crashed against the floor - the cup at his mother's bedside Enoch assumed. He started forward and put a hand to the door but hesitated.

"Balthamos, will you attend the birth of my sibling? I cannot enter the room but I wish support for my mother. Can you aide her? I pray such good things for her and the child she will bear. I pray for their safety and I pray that you will enable this."

The angel nodded slightly and disappeared from Enoch's vision once again. Entering the house, Balthamos could feel an intensity around him such that he'd imagine in a moment like this. There was a certain static quality sticking to the actuality of his being and he sensed something great in the stirrings of consciousness surrounding him. Balthamos would gladly attend to the birth of a creature of The Authority's chosing. He wished to take part in every miracle handed to humans and angels by The Authority and felt that his presence could perhaps encourage the birth of this child.

The woman screamed in pain and lurched forward in her bedridden position. Sweat dripped from her in the effort she exerted and she held her breath and strained to push the child from her. Balthamos took his true form and expanded throughout the room to better experience the birth. Such an energy flowed from the woman and his being whirled in anticipation. Slowly he pushed his being to willing the strength into the woman to continue the birth quickly. She pushed her arms to her sides and strained more, now with the aide of every scrap of being in the room willing her success.

The Father made a noise of excitement and reached to his wife. Balthamos pushed himself to connect more with every feeling the room held - he lashed onto the thrill of the birth, the tearing pain of the woman, the stress and anxiety, every human emotion he had ever seen pass through Enoch's form - and willed his own being forward. The woman clenched her teeth and fell back against the bed, exhausted.

In the small room Jared held his new son to his chest and wrapped a blanket around him. "Rest, my love." He kissed the child. "Rest, my love." He kissed his wife. "Your night was difficult but it is over and our son is healthy and full." The baby yelped in response.

"Blessed." The mother reached a trembling hand to her new son, weak from exertion but in desperate need for contact with the child she'd born. "We are truly blessed. He has blessed us in this son, Jared, I know this in my heart. We have been blessed by both of our sons." She smiled in such a tender way, Balthamos felt his being surge in his connected state. Quickly, Balthamos pulled away from the human feelings he'd inhabited for the moment and formed himself Angel again. Residue of the excitement clung to him still, and the woman's tenderness pulled him so. Even formed, he trembled with the woman still.

"Baruch" he spoke.

* * *

"Baruch" literally means "blessed" in Hebrew, apparently.

This chapter made possible by the fantastic vocalings of L'arcenciel and my own attachment to at least one of their songs.

* * *


	6. Building Up

"Thank you kindly, Sir." Enoch leaned down from the cornerstone he stood upon to accept the donations from the shopkeeper. 

"It isn't much, but your youth and passion are inspiring, son. I will pray for your project."

Enoch nodded again in appreciation and smiled as the man walked away. _Eight years. Eight years and such little progress_.

"Balthamos?"

"I am here." the angel replied and took shape near the man's side.

"Will you join me inside while I pray. My thoughts betray the love of the Authority and I must spend today seeking forgiveness."

"What thoughts are these?"

Enoch looked away and down, sweeping a hand over his forhead to push his long dark hair away. "I wish death for these vandals. I hope the temple itself spilled their blood as they took their tools to it."

He didn't look up, but ran a hand over the injured building.

_Eight years. Walls so strong built with his own hands, punctured and some fallen in a single night_.

Enoch could not fathom the mind of God. To accept such a tought into himself would be to betray his own faith in the vast glory of Him. Instead, he worked from his own position where he knew he was loved; knowing this he took it as his responsibility to spread The Authority's love to others.  
It started with the temple, or rather the idea. He could not get the village to accept The Authority and His ruling if he could not gather them into an arena of acceptance. He proposed such a meeting area to Balthamos, and the angel spoke with Michael.

"He is a bright boy." The archangel remarked, but said no more. No more was necessary, Balthamos glistened in respect and admiration of his watch - compliments from the voices of the highest angels.

And so Enoch began. He'd learned writing and reading from his own father and pressed paper to compose a series of "miela" - short stories and sentences he gathered before he could begin an act of bringing the Authority to the people, or as he saw returning the people to their Creator.

Balthamos snorted in disdain. "Why do you attempt to write down those feelings which connect a human to their Creator? Your words do injustice."

Enoch was hurt, but not disuaded. "My words are all I have." he sighed. "My letters cannot reach God but if they can reach the people, and they in turn, stretch their hands out with me, that is enough. I have no wings but must seek God by fashioning myself some from this paper." he laughed, but only lightly. All the years had not brought him within comfort around his Angelic guardian.

Enoch began his preaching with his building. He tuaght some words to those uneducated so they could read with him as he tuaght the small things his own father had taught him about The Authority. Mainly, Enoch taught about the Creation of humans from dust. He progressed slowly as he learned how to better communicate to the growing audience which gathered each day to assist his building process. Each morning the bowed heads brought to him a smile, and each evening he was content in trying to fulfill a committed life to the Creator.

And the building rose. It was not elaborate, it needed no such elaborations. It was small and squat and square. The inner and outer walls had all been whitewashed and a few rectangular windows lined the back wall. Stools and cushions filled the interior in anticipation of the crowds which would eventually assemble there to pray and worship.

_But now..._

Enoch made a small noise and a tear dripped from his nose in his bowed position within the crumbled temple.

_ Godless..._

His fists bunched together into a package at his heart.

_He didn't have the power..._

His shoulders hunched as he fell into a silent fit of despair.

_He was just a man..._

"Balthamos..." he whispered. "Why does The Authority not make his presence known to these people. He must despair at us all"The angel didn't answer.  
"I am too weak, I cannot make them understand! Why does God show kindness to this weakling?" "You are strong with belief"  
"True strength, though, the ability to make them believe. I don't posess a means to this." Enoch tried to fill his heart with the strength Balthmos had said was there. He looked to the angel - _he'd been chosen, for some reason, The Authority had sent one of his angels to be with him_.  
_Why did He not send his angels to all people? Were they so wretched_

"I am not strong enough." Enoch repeated his anguish. "Even physically, I cannot rebuild these walls alone."

"You are strong." Balthamos repeated his own encouragement for the man. "Stronger even than some angels."

The man caught himself at this and stared, open-mouthed. "Wh-what?"

"The strength of an angel varries. The strength of a human varries in the same way. You will continue the task you've made because you are strong as a human in the most important ways."

"I am?" Enoch smiled, somwhere between confusion and determination and settled himself there. He would cut more stones and work for fabric for the stained and cut curtains. He would relay the stone and repaint it all, sand down the ruined steps and reconstruct the benches. He would remake the temple for God.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

This isn't at all what I sat down to write. Part of it is, but most of it isn't. What I intended to write was full of a rushed love story and horses and villians, but that can wait and I'd rather feel I did this right. I'm not rushing this one because no one seems to be reading this time around. It's a slow starter though, I certainly understand that and mostly I'm still laying ideas and possibilities but I still have my plan and if I don't set things right then the ending gets to look like a chess match where I've pointed over your shoulder to the spaceship and switched the pieces while you aren't looking so that I can win.

I think it's also that Will+Lyra's are the most popular it seems. Fanfiction services our need to see them and more of them. So this is my first time stepping away from them and trying to find other stories within the worlds of His Dark Materials. They're so easy because love is simple, no matter how complex you make it it's there and it's big and it's unmissable. Guess that's why I normally go with Will+Lyra, but I simply could not see any more stories there - I'd done the spin-off and the future story and one massively Out-of-character which never made it off my own computer (be thankful I didn't drop that onto the heaps of HDM horrors). So it's time to move on and away.

So, I guess that's all. I don't necessarily feel the need to defend what I'm posting, but I'm thinking that I don't really like the disconnection from the story - just posting it and letting it fly around and only seeing numbers of clicks rather than any readers or anything. I'll keep nourishing my little story whatever the matter, but I figure I can let a little light on the spark behind it.


	7. Chisiya

Horses. Horses and horse racing, horses and horse selling. Horse bragging and horse betting. A potluck dinner on the corner road, day-old vegetables: half priced and going fast - going rotten or selling was the question. Good luck charms and beer, half as cheap - betting fuels. 

Baruch leaned down to feel along the thick calves of the stallion. Dark colored, with a matted mane like roasting chestnuts - slick with their own oils. He ran a hand down its leg again, appreciating the muscles he felt moving underneath as the stallion backed away and snorted at his touch. The horse made a small click of disapproval and stamped a rear leg in response as Baruch continued to run a hand along it, over it's back and along its shoulders. It let out a sneeze.

He laughed. It wasn't a timid creature, but it didn't appreciate the smaller being in the least. It appreciated the double-knotted ropes around its neck even less, but they kept it standing at its beam for all the buyers to parouse.

"Son! You buying?" a voice behind Baruch demanded his attention and he spun to meet the seller.

"No, Sir." He smiled widely, knowing the man could tell by his looks alone he'd never afford one of these stallions.

"Hands off and move along, you'll scare off the customers."

The boy shrugged in response, it could be true and he certainly wasn't doing anything useful just admiring the horse. He left the buyers area and made a line to the potluck dinner to fetch a lunch for he and his brother.

Baruch loved the horse fair. It brought strange new people and foods and stories - all on horseback! All to be admired and shared for whatever price one could afford.

"Baruch!" the potluck-seller woman called to him and he waved from a distance.

"Marda," he replied on approach, "How is your family?"

"Sick!" she yelped. "All sick, the lot of them. You might want to go check on them for me if you're not busy right now. Fevers and sweats, our oldest won't eat anything either, too sick to even get done some mending around the house."

"Two please." He produced two small tin pales from somewhere in the his sack and adjusted the strap again over his chest and shoulder. "I'm sure they're not that poorly off, Marda, could be they're just skipping work today?" He winked at the suggestion.

"Louses." she grumbled and returned the pales, now filled with bread pudding, back to Baruch. "I saw you over there with that horse, Baruch. You thinking of stealing it and dashing off into the night?"

"Not in broad daylight of course."

"No you're smart, young one, you'll wait until dark and then -"

"Then? Something heroic, I'm certain."

"Theiving, is what! You were born in the wrong place with too many crazy ideas. Don't you start taking after your brother, there, we don't need but one of him in our humble village."

"Enoch's not so awful, Marda, he's built his temple and placed that tablet outside. He just thinks a bit differently, is all."

"Talks to angels, is what he thinks. The man needs to find a wife to settle him down. You start looking for one Baruch, find him a good woman and she'll teach him right where his time should go to. And find yourself one, too, before you start seeing these angels!"

Baruch hooked both thumbs behind the strap across his chest and backed away. "Don't you worry about me, Marda. I'm just the opposite - I only talk with demons!" And with another wink, he turned back into the crowd of the horse fair.

Chestnut mare. He saw her: hair so similarly colored, slick with oils and falling well past her shoulders. Dark caramel skin and a hand shielding her eyes, searching over the crowd back near the seller's stalls. Light-colored sleevless top and long linen skirts falling off her figure in a wave that pulled the young man towards her.

"You came with the horse fair?" Baruch fell into an easy spot by her side, she was a great deal shorter than him and he hoped he wasn't as intimidating as his size felt.

"Do I look so lost?" she asked and gave him a smile.

"Lost? No," he responded lightly, "you look like you're running away."

She turned at this. "But why -"

"And you're looking back to the stalls for your brother." he cut her off, unwilling to give her a chance to leave. _You must be bold with horses and wild creatures, let them know you are firm and they will find comfort in that_. "It's the similar coloring that gives you away, otherwise you could pass for a person instead. I have a brother as well," he added, "our village tends to be of the opinion that he's not right, says strange things."

"And you don't?" he gave her just the right opening, she knew it so well and smiled queerly at him.

"Come on, I'll show you what I mean." Baruch took the hand that was still shielding her eyes and dove with her back towards the stalls. He moved quickly and his sack bounced against his back but he didn't dare to look back to see if his lunch was spilling, his chestnut mare could decide she'd seen something she didn't like. _Chestnut stallion_ he stopped near the horse and brought them both close in against the posts where the senses reeled against the image of the tied horse and forced a reaction to it. He pulled her hand up in his, cupping both hands around her small one and placing them on the shoulder of the beast. It shuddered slightly and snorted, making her jump back a bit and laugh.

"See?" He pulled his hand back from hers and brought it down across the stallion's mane. "The similar coloring." He wouldn't be so bold to run his hand over the mare's mane, but did nod to the girl's hair.

"Oh." She smiled lightly in understanding, almost sadly. "Chesnut stallion."

"Chestnut mare," he responded.

"Chisiya."

"Baruch."

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I'm pronouncing it "Iseeah" but then my pronunciation often lacks basis in actual language.


	8. Split Roots

The words "dashing" and "courageous" danced around lighting inside Baruch's head as he made his evening escape through the orchards. He took his time, starting out from the house with the deep incoming of dusk and beginning in the olive grove picking out a few of the choiciest fruits and plucking away the crimpled blossoms to allow the trees their regrowth. He'd left his sandals at the end of the sixth row earlier - _the scarred tree_ - he thought back to the lightning storm. So many cracks and such splitting of air and earth but a downpour such that it ended nearly as it'd started, blessing none of their orchards with their life's drinking water. He dropped a a number of olives into a fabric cloth, then finished tied the ends together and added that into his sack, reslinging the strap back across his chest and making toward the scarred olive tree with swift purpose. 

Finding the familiar tree he laid a hand over it's blackened trunk, thanking the tree in his own small way for holding his sandals. It produced neither bloom nor fruit now, but Jacob had been unwilling to remove it, stating firstly that his sons had to tend to the living trees rather than suffer the weight of the dead, and then deciding that those things stricken deserve a chance to fight. Baruch agreed silently with his father, the tree was distinctive as well and aided the walk through the orchards - seven rows to the right and down the treeline ran him home, continuing up and towards the sunset led to the small gully that bordered their land-line and created a divide between the village and the beginning of - _the rest_. _Where we people visit in our dreams, those places that are unfamiliar and hold awe for us_.

_Perhaps I am heading toward a dream_, Baruch told himself slowly - a warning that his actions were in haste. He turned the thought around and worked out that he hadn't a choice for timliness, his chestnut mare came with the horse fair; she would leave with it also. He laced up his sandals and took deep strides away from his home now.

He moved quietly but swiftly, with head pounding with thoughts and heart with feeling. He would not have noticed the voices had they not been accompanied with a small fire-like glow. The young man halted and began creeping now, towards the voices, moving against the small twisted trunks and ducking low to avoid scraping the fruits from the branches that sheathed them. Attempts unsuccessful, the olives dropped and the tree shuddered, giving away his approach. The dull glow went out suddenly with whispers and a sharp command.

"Hello?" a voice called out from over the tree tips - Enoch.

Baruch stood up suddenly in surprise and smiled. He'd missed seeing his brother today and the man hadn't been home to see their parents in nearly a week.

"Enoch!" he called back.

"Baruch?" the two met each other stumbling out from their respective row of olive trees and embraced. "I missed you today!" his brother echoed his own thoughts. And pulled back holding him roughly at arm's length. "What are you doing out here in the dark?" He let go so Baruch could readjust his rucksack and stand comfortably.

"I was outting the lamps and thought I heard something so I came to check," he lied easily. It felt more romantic if it he kept the adventure his own heart's secret. He couldn't sacrifice his ideas of "dashing" and "courageous" to sit and talk giddily with his brother. He would tell him later. "Why are you out here? I heard voices, Enoch."

"Yes." Enoch smiled slowly, calculating his own words. Baruch had always accepted him and loved him regardless that so many considered him little more than a vagrant. He couldn't lie to someone who loved him so.

"Enoch, was that other voice one of your angels?"

"It was." he nodded and indicated they should take a seat to continue their discussion. Baruch had never shown much interest in discussing the subject which made his brother so hated or feared - if there were truth to either he'd prefer to not find it and keep instead his own love for his brother, untainted by the thoughts of others and his imperfections that went with them. Enoch was his older brother, he cared for him and aided him, spoke with him as no other could - angels would force their easy relation to change. Baruch hated the realization immediately - he could no longer avoid whatever it was which haunted his brother.

"Enoch, you know no one likes when you talk about angels. They love the temple, you should keep building that up and you won't have to talk about the angels anymore."

Enoch was silent, waiting, he knew, for his younger sibling to continue. Baruch _must_ have his own thoughts beyond what should or should not be done accordingly to the good of the public. Baruch removed his sack and laid it down at his side, untying the top and removing the package of olives he'd gathered in a bnundle and opening it - offering the olives to his brother and popping one into his own mouth. He swallowed heavily, imagining the tangy fruit allowing his tongue to loosen.

"Brother, please! Are they...are the angels, can they be real? Are they real? Why do only you see them! Isn't that wrong - how can one man see things and be right when no one else sees them! Brother...please!" he begged.

Enoch had long dreaded this confrontation, but was older and calmer than his own brother._ To be doubted by the one who hurts most_.

"The angels are real." he assured Baruch and smiled widely, as if to show the younger brother had no reason to fear for him.

"But why just you!"

"He speaks of our lineage sometimes." Enoch took up a small handful of olives as he continued, "Do you know the story of Creation?"

"You have told me," Baruch nodded.

"No, you've forgotten." Enoch clipped off his brother's half-eared listening techniques and the younger man reddened knowing he had disrespected his brother. "When The Authority created the world for Men the first man he created from that good earth was named Adam, and from Adam he created the first woman - Eve. The two sinned greatly against their Creator and were expelled from paradise bringing out with them sin and sadness into the world. Expelled from Eden, they had numerous sons and daughters, the first sons of man being Cain and Able - Cain was the elder and tended a farm, and Able the younger and looked after a herd of sheep. Eventually Cain was overtaken with jealousy - sin brought into the world through the original sin of their parents in disobeying The authority - and he slew his younger brother, then denying The Authority when He spoke with the boy. So Cain lived and bred more sin into the world. However Adam and Eve gave birth again to a son - Seth. And Seth's sons and daughters married and intermingled with the lines of Cain's sons and daughters. However, some lines stayed pure - some of Seth's sons never married into Cain's lineage. Baruch, this is out bloodline! These great people our our ancestors - we can trace back our heritage with none of the sin of those stricken with the blood of Cain! I was chosen for this reason."

Baruch nodded, but did not understand. "I am also - like you - then? I should also see these angels?"

Enoch sighed. He had hoped for so long now that Balthamos would come to him one day bringing another, how long he'd prayed his own brother would also be recognized by the angels and The Authority himself perhaps. How often his heart ached to know the goodness in Baruch was unable to overcome any humanly shortcomings and shine through as a light to the Heavens. How frequently he'd wept in hoping his brother could overcome his namesake and truly be "blessed."

"They may come to you some day, yet, Baruch."

"I see." he still didn't understand but could not end their discussion without trying to know. "What do they look like? So I should know if I am ever visited."

Enoch puzzled a moment over this. "I don't think I properly know what they look like. The angel who comes to me appears as a handsome man, lit from within and with a stretch of the finest and most glorious pair of white wings sprouting from his back."

"Does he fly with his wings?"

"The angel moves through the air, but I don't feel as though the wings need aide him."

"Then, he appears as a man, because he was a man?"

Enoch gaped slightly, agog with the notion. "Balthamos is _Angelic_"

"Balthamos? Then he has a name, as a man does?"

"Angels are _not_ men!" Enoch's voice gained a deep throaty growl to it, as if he were a young beast threatened in its home. "You cannot say such things, Baruch!" he ended sharply.

"Then we do not become angels after death? You regard them as higher beings, would that not be sensible?"

"No. Certainly not."

"I see." Still, as every younger brother has such large faith in every elder brother that they can never reach a point to anger them, he pushed onward. "Then how do angels _become_"

"The Creator, of course. He who created angels first, then created man."

"Yet if man came second then wouldn't The Authority create something greater than his first creation?" Baruch said.

"Angels were created to glorify Heaven. Man was created to reach that glory." Enoch responded.

"How do people become angels?"

Again, Enoch gaped at his brother. Suddenly he felt cold and disconnected, suddenly he realized how different they truly were, suddenly he felt alone even with the single soul he felt most at home with. It was as if the passing moments of silence stolen away the last innocent part of him which allowed him to believe his brother would also become a great man, and the area it hollowed was replaced by such a dread for the young man sitting in front of him. Something shifted within him and broke his heart as he was forced to understand why Baruch hadn't been chosen. He stood and put a hand on his brother's shoulder.

"There is a great deal you don't understand, Baruch. You are still young."

"But if The Authority created both man and angel then couldn't at least He create angel from man?"

Enoch shifted as Baruch tucked his legs under him and made to stand.

"He is unlimited, all things are done by Him and through Him and for Him."

Baruch stood now, aware that his brother could no longer meet his gaze.

"Enoch?" The older brother turned and began walking back toward the scarred tree and their home.

"Baruch," he spoke over his shoulder, "why does one bring a rucksack and stop to pick olives when checking for an intruder?"

It stopped him cold. He'd been realized for his lie, and there was nothing for it. He'd lied to his brother, something was wrong and he could not right it now. He stood a moment, unhappy but still drawn by the adventure, letting Enoch walk away. Sighing, he resumed a smile and stepped out again toward the gully and the edge of their orchard.

Enoch walked roughly back through the trees and paused briefly. "Balthamos?"

"Always here."

"Can you follow him?" Enoch spoke to the ground, the angel had stayed with him but not appeared since Baruch had sounded from the trees. A single tear followed a worn path down Enoch's face. "Can you protect him?"

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Oh, I really enjoyed writing this chapter - I think it turned out fantastic! The next chapter will pick up basically where this one left off so as not to put you through too long of a chapter. Also, ten points to anyone who picks out all the HDM quotes, references and excessive symbolism. Sorry, it was unintentional but now my head's been shaped around it and how nicely it fits. Thirty points if you can pick it up here and in my other fanfic Landing Tails - that one's loaded!


	9. Fallen Olives

Onward.

Half the distance of the town itself of shifting desert and a chill creeping in behind Baruch.

With the sunset a recent event from the gully, he'd been able to spot the fairers' tents and aimed himself in that direction. Since then the dispersed spare light had faded back into its nightly soujourn and left the young man alone and pulling himself the distance to reach the tents.

He heard the horses first - Chisiya had said that was where to find her. Hooves fell heavily into the packed sand and mud mixture the sellers had set their tents up in. Soft grunts and snorts kept him moving. They escalated slightly and fell back into a dull constant a number of times, reminding Baruch to stay alert for others moving into and away from the the makeshift corral.

He took a vigil by one of the thick, splintering wooden posts - a knotty root of some awkward bit of reluctant growth. The horses were kept in the pen mainly by a series of stakes and ropes, the pen itself being more an instrument to keep others out.

Soft velvet on the back of his neck, Baruch spun. Chestnut stallion.

"He likes you. We need to be off now." Chisiya appeared and whipped a set of reins around at Baruch's quick-grasping hands, regardless of his horsemanship abilities or lack thereof.

"Chisiya!" He toned quietly, thrilled to find her there so suddenly.

"Come with me." She flashed a smile, dark in the still-emerging moonlight. Chisiya sat back abruptly on her own horse and with a flick sped away from the tents. She only glanced back a moment to see Baruch. He would keep up.

"Please." Baruch reached a hand up to touch the horse's broad forehead and laid his hand there a moment to close his eyes and feel his heart pounding into his head - forcing lights behind his eyes in anticipation. An awkward leap aided by the pen-fencing brought him clumsily down onto the back of the giant beast, arm over leg. With little else on his mind, he made off to beat down the path left by his chestnut mare.

His riding was a violent struggle to stay onstride and onback at best times. More than once he'd jerked the reins down fiercely in effort to replace himself on the horse's back. They rode speedily, but only a short distance, stopping at an area slight of gorwth chosen apparently, without purpose. Baruch's eventual descent was further pain - a small dive from the stallion as Chisiya grasped the large head in her dark-cream hands and pulled down to see the stallion level. A thick coolness spread over him as he landed sharply on his side and rolled away.

"Shhhh...shhhh. Tch, tch, tch. Hush, darling." Chisiya laid her hands over the stallion's eyes until his frantic breathing halted - Baruch had ridden madly to keep up and the horse was not at all happy. "Shhhhh." she continued soothing him until he picked his head away from her and stepped back to meet the mare she'd ridden out.

"Brother doesn't like you, afterall." She laughed to Baruch and helped him brush the dust from his shirt.

"That's his name then?"

"It's like you said." She pulled her own hair around front to show him again the coloring.

With the moon only beginning her blush for them he attached mainly onto the memory of her, rather than attempt to strain through the shadows. "You've bought him, then."

She brushed a hand across her skirt. "The men I travel with..." she trailed for a moment, and then - "Baruch, why did you follow?"

"Because it was you." he smiled, back on familiar ground now, happy to discover a chance he wanted his legs recovered from the ride his usual ease crept back into him.

"Good." she shifted her attention to the sack she'd brought and pulled out a length of cloth - not a proper blanket by any means it was frayed at the edges and a glowing shade of palest brown in the enveloping moonlight. "You've never ridden before?"

"No, not really. I still don't think I've done more than hang on," he added.

She made a face and tossed him one end of their makeshift blanket to smooth out some distance from the bits of growth they'd stopped at. "You still managed to pick out the best stallion at the horse fair."

"Best mare as well." He reddened and wondered if she too, dark cream, blushed. Dark almond eyes held his steady. _She would not blush, she had no reason._ They sat at either end of their blanket and Baruch spread out his bundle of olives between them.

She could only withstand the silence long enough to pop the first olive into her mouth. "Egypt. That's where I'm from."

"Oh."

Seeing Baruch's blank recognition, she continued. "It's to the West and South from here, my city. Many days of riding. You ought to be more aware, Baruch."

"I've never even left this village," Baruch said. "The men you travel with - they're traders?"

"Something like that. The men are a kind group and I stay with them."

"Your family travels as well?" Baruch was trying to puzzle out what "the men" meant to Chisiya.

"Oh, well. It's complicated. I know my father travels with us, I know some men are not my father, but I cannot know which man he is."

Baruch laid a pile of olive pits off to the side in a small hole he'd burrowed out with his thumb, smearing chunks of the compacted mud-sand away from the blanket. He offered a hand to gather Chisiya's olive pits. "What does that mean? You can't know because he is a villianous man?"

"I'm just not allowed to know."

"Yet - a child should be able to honor their parents and show them proper respect. You must honor all the men at your camp then?"

"I do." she replied, hesitantly. "I owe them much."

Baruch," Chisiya turned quickly and grabbed Baruch's hand as it made way to his mouth. Both their hands were still sticky with olive juice. "Would you believe me, please, if I'd tell you about me - what I was told of myself? It's so strange, but..." she trailed.

"I'll believe you."

"Because it's me?" she brightened visibly to him now, a rush came at him from within. "the same reason you followed me, even though I didn't wait for you? It wasn't very kind of me, I am sorry. I wasn't thinking you'd never ridden before."

"I'll believe you." Baruch repeated.

She relaxed and stole the olive from his hand before letting go. She leaned back away from him and pulled her feet in under her skirts before starting. "I'm not allowed to know which of the men I travel with is my father because he could be killed for it." She stopped and smiled sadly, looking over to Baruch to catch a reproachful look. She couldn't find it. Baruch stayed firmly in his position at the end of their blanket, hunched forward slightly with his sack propped under one arm against his leg. His face registered only earnest interest.

"I said I'd believe you and I will. The only way I can know you is to trust you. And I would like to know you, Chisiya. Trust can only grow in its exchange; I'll trust you."

She gave him a queer look. "Thank you. You seem to be a good listener, and we're all the way out here now - I'll tell you my story."

My father was an ambitious young man. He fell in love with a gorgeous and wealthy woman in Egypt, even though he wasn't the same status. She was beautiful, my mother, they say I look like her, too...I really can only imagine her, I don't remember her at all. But because she was the daughter of a very wealthy man as well as beautiful, she was offered to the Pharoh himself as a wife. He never did marry her, but he had many women - she was never his first wife and didn't have much status with him, but she was already in love with my father. So when she became gave birth - to me - she told my father I wasn't the Pharoh's child. He became desperate to get me away, and so he turned to a band of brigands who'd set their camp up outside of the city for an ongoing celebration. He offered himself to them then, to work with them. There's always men dying..." she stopped on this a moment, but seemed unaffected, "there's so much to it, really. They stole me from the palace during one of the parades of the celebration. Many of the guards were out with the Pharoh and I was newborn - too young to attend the festivities so I stayed in the palace with the lesser women and guards. We have to keep moving now, running always to make sure no one can catch us. I've never seen anyone chasing, but that just means we're safe. The Pharoh found out eventually - that I might not be his - I'm told my mother was killed then. And there's a reward offered to bring in my father dead. See, they don't actually know if I'm really the Pharoh's daughter or not, so they have to bring me back into Egypt and cleanse me at the palace." She stopped and looked to Baruch for a reaction.

"That means kill me. They'd cut my hands off and wait until I died. It would be a ceremony. I think they'd announce it in the city, and let people come to pray while I died. A priest would probably do the cutting. I'd be lucky also if they'd cut my feet off, I bet I'd die faster."

'Wistful' was the only word Baruch could muster within himself to describe the way she turned from him. The wind blew lightly at their backs, sending the ends of her chestnut hair twitching.

"Do you still believe me, Baruch?" She directed the question sharply at her companion.

"I'm sorry." he shook his head, "Your life is difficult. I will not say I wish to unburden you, and that is why I came here. I think you are strong to have come so far and I am inadequate to offer you consolation. But I am here beside you and if I can, that is what I want to offer you. I'd like to stay here - with you. I like it here beside you, Chisiya."

She smiled and moved closer to him. "I like you also, Baruch. I can't tell who you are yet, but you're here. To me, that means a great deal. To be here, now." Her fingers danced slowly around his back to intertwine and ensnare him into a hug he would not pull away from. "Thank you Baruch," she toned softly into his neck, "thank you."

"Isi," a garbled whisper behind her, a twist in their blanket that pulled under her knees. Cold, rough metal at her arm.

"No!" She slapped the instrument away hastily and spun away from the embrace. "No! No!" she screamed again.

"Your horses leave deep tracks, Isi. You ought to know you can't be trusting of people."

"No! No!" she yelled again at the multitude of shapes around them now, soaking in the moonlight to give out their familiar features. "He's Baruch and I love him! Please leave us!"

"You love him?" A different voice this time, oddly high-pitched and somewhere to the left. Baruch was fully captivated, these were "the men" - the theives Chisiya had spoken of. They'd brought weapons. Swords, bent oddly in the moonlight. Spears _distance weapons_ Baruch realized with a shock of alarm - throwing weapons.

"Chisiya!" he pulled the girl back down to himself to protect her. _She's so small_ he thought, and wrapped his large arms and back around to covered her.

"No, Baruch, it's not me!" she pulled herself out and hugged him again - now wrapping her body around the target to protect him.

He stayed sitting, helpless, eyes widening with realization. A small cough from his left.

"Isi, you can't stay there forever. You don't have to do the protecting, that's why we're here."

A different man: "You know we've always protected you, kept you safe with us. It's part of our living now, Isi, we care deeply for you - you know this. We just want to keep you safe, we have to."

"No! You have weapons that won't protect me; that can't protect my heart! If you truly care to protect me leave us alone, and now!" she called visciously through Baruch's hair.

_Protect her heart_.

Slowly Baruch reached around himself. He tugged her hands away gently and unwound himself from their tangled blanket of safety she'd made for him.

"Baruch?" she pleaded.

"You say you love me. Such a strong feeling, so very fast. If it is mine also, I will protect your heart as these men seem to protect you."

"Isi, you do understand, don't you. Please try, please know that we love you. Aiko. Enar." The light streaked higher as the two named, with purpose laid clearly, each raised their weapon.

"Please, stop." Baruch spoke loudly to the men around him, he stood now, a great deal taller than the others. "I do not claim I can return the love which has staked itself for me, but I pray you will all give me the chance. I am frightened as well, but I will trust you with my life because you all care enough to protect the life of Chisiya, and I do know I want to love her also, deeply in time. I beg you all for this." He bowed his head to the ground slightly, hoping for the second time that day his height wasn't as intimidating as it made him feel.

"Please..." Chisiya whispered behind him, left alone on their blanket, fingers twisting up mounds of dirt underneath the cloth, hoping.

A single man strode forward to meet Baruch at arm's length. "I am sorry, Chisiya. Please try to understand, in time." He brought his bent-sword slowly forward - ireluctantly/i - and downward in a flash. Baruch felt a searing at his shoulder, then nothing.

Brilliance lit the area. A shining center of force took shape before the young man, sending the other backward in terror.

"Gods!" the man with the bent-sword cried and turned to run and gather his horse, and his self, far away.

"You will leave this man alone." The light spoke strangely, gently in its harsh glare, gently in the harsh exchange. "He will not be harmed."

A poorly-aimed spear made for the light, ended its path halting with suddenness in the air - some distance still from the light. It shimmered, colors patterning themselves up the shaft and playing across the slim blade before breaking themselves away. The spear broke apart and fell. Baruch watched the spear crack, a small wimper releasing itself from his throat.

Seeing the broken weapon, the remaining men turned to flee hastily, less fearful than the first. They had seen much violence. A light was difficult, but a broken weapon restored their solidity and gave them an enemy to turn from. Shortly, horse hooves beat away from the blanket as one. A single trail paced off in the opposite direction.

"Chisiya..." Baruch turned to the blanket and picked the scattered olives from it. He tossed them aside. The light continued brightly at his back, streaking and shifting always, colors draped themselves across the blanket where his shadow did not fall. "She is gone now."

He began brushing off the blanket and picked it up to fold the corners of the blanket in, in turn. "There are no horses to return with."

Balthamos stretched himself into the angelic form he'd become accoustomed to, wrapping the layers of light into the structure Baruch could perceive as the nature of angel. The light shining both within and upon the angel dimmed as he shifted his form. Baruch kept his back to the angel still.

"You need not fear me, Baruch." He spoke again, the same gentle voice which had entered such violence.

"You are Balthamos, I do not fear you. I will not fear you." he turned angrily to the angel now, "You are just another part of tonight. I won't let this shape me in any way. I cannot be so easily affected." iI will be solid/i he thought, _I will let myself be a rock. To be solid and steady through my life, this is my ambition_. He stumbled to the ground suddenly, deep scarlett black in the moonlight covering the left half of his chest and shirt. He laid his head into the mass of blanket he'd gathered and began to sob.

"I am not a rock!" he wailed and pushed himself further against the ground. His body shook, racked with sobs. For the girl or himself, he did not know. He beat a fist at his chest and nearly blacked out from the pain, gasping harshly into the blanket with the shock of it. He snapped his jaw closed to grind his teeth in the pain.

Balthamos twisted in agitation to see the young man. A flood came at him again he knew so well, the memory of Baruch's birth, the feeling of what that life had become as it engulfed the room with itself, pulling at emotions and gaining such feeling from them. From the start, he'd known this life. To _feel_ as Baruch did with such passion from the start, such passion that grew and swelled each day he'd quietly watched the young man as a stranger at Enoch's side. A life that _felt_ as greatly as Baruch's would feel even stronger now.

Knowing little else of humans but the affections he'd seen and the their own reflections of angels, Balthamos moved over to Baruch and gathered him - as Chisiya had done to protect him - into a deep embrace. Baruch fell lightly against Balthamos, and as the coolness spread over him, let blackness overtake him.

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I actually type everything up in notepad - these documents never see any spelling editor, thus the occasional sloppiness. And while I dislike the spelling errors, I don't actually know how to correct them without deleting the full chapter and re-uploading, which might also delete my single (and wonderful) reviewer! So I must say errors acknowledged, thank you, and hang my head.


	10. Echoes and Impressions

"Blue, then? From this corner?" Baruch enquired.

"Yes, that's right. Then along the edge at the mantle it switches into yellow. The face is blue, though."

Enoch had discovered a seller of small colored tiles among the stalls at the horse fair. He'd met with a bargain and offered the seller payment with the delivery of tiles and the mixture the man assured was necessary for proper setting of the squares. He'd agreed first on a noble and rich plum color - ascertaining it related closely to divinity. However, costs had forced Enoch into purchasing a more moderately colored, slightly translucent blue colored tile. The seller had given him the yellow tiles at no cost: a bonus for the "man who spoke with the tongues of the ethereal" as he'd said it. Baruch felt it was more plausible the seller felt guilty at overcharging Enoch from the start of their dealings.

It had taken four months for the tile-seller to return with enough wares to cover the front piece of Enoch's altar. Many weeks he'd ridden across the countries with his caravan. He'd reached so many stops along the way that he arrived at Shammahah with only supplies enough for orders previously settled. The seller came from a small village to the west; there, he said, towers were built curved in structure, peaked and adorned with tiles. Colors reaching to the sun; near-gossamer in their delicate beauty covering the grounded buildings, projecting them higher and more grandiose.

_Reaching_ Enoch moved slowly over this word as they argued costs. He knew deeply that reaching was a need of his temple. _Reach the people, allow them to reach to The Authority, tell them how to reach for Him, allow Him in His Glory to extend that hand back._ He prayed each morning. Mornings he prayed for hope, nights became a ritual for forgiveness. Forgiveness for others, for his own faults, forgiveness for the wanting he had.

"Brother, why do you need decoration in your temple?" Baruch had asked. The question was sensible. Vandalism had subsided since the horse fair, but still was a serious threat to the infant place of worship. Enoch had repaired the benches many times. Baruch feared the bright tiles would just serve as a further attraction to the vandals.

"But perhaps it will attract the devout, as well. Devout," he continued, "those wishing to devote themselves to The Authority, His Name and His Goodness."

And so the tiling process had begun, Enoch working through the day and the younger brother visiting him bringing dinner and evening aid to the project after his own work in the orchards finished. Enoch had also begun an effort among his neighbors to dissuade them of the image he'd presented since Balthamos had first arrived to him. He labored to return to being once again the respectable eldest son of Jared. He moved his preaching from its initial approach - a direction oriented entirely on forcing The Authority's rule on those who would attend him - into one of first discussing the necessity of human goodness and community, and later introducing persons to the concepts of "Creator" as he saw them ready to bear the obligations Knowing placed on them.

A crash. Enoch looked to see his brother - now crouched over a wooden box with tiles spilling out, swearing colorfully. "Sorry," he added hastily, referring to his cursings. Enoch went to help him.

"It's all right, Baruch. You'll get stronger again," he nodded, and patted him on the shoulder before assisting with the clean up. "The tiles are small and sturdy, see? Not even cracked."

Baruch managed a sideways smile as he returned the squares into their straw-filled box. "It's been four months now. I think this is it."

He hurt still. _Four months, this is it._

_Four months since Chisiya disappeared, since Balthamos came, since my shoulder._ He still didn't like the thoughts. He had a deep scar that ran from the end of the line formed by his collarbone back over his shoulder and frontally down his chest as a faint line. More importantly, it ran past the appearance on his skin: it ran through his muscles and never allowed them to heal fully. His left arm constantly gave out under pressure. He woke to numbness in the limb and freezing fingertips, pumping the life back into his arm and massaging his shoulder with his stronger right arm. An uncertainty had been with him this past month as he'd come to realize the injury was as healed as it could be by that point. Sometimes his arm failed to respond entirely - the signals were getting there, but he lacked the ability to enforce a proper response from his arm. He was thankful though for his remaining physical strength. The sudden departure of Chisiya's band of traders - if he could imagine them as such - jolted him away from his possible reward for the pain they'd caused. His scar of love ran physically through his body.

"I'm all right." he'd assured the Angel from his embrace that night. "I'm all right." Still, Balthamos hadn't let go. From what that kindness meant, from where he'd fallen into darkness, he could heal.

"It was too soon for love, wasn't it?" he'd asked later of the angel.

_So casual_ Enoch, nearby, noted with a shock.

"I cannot know that."

"Can't know love?" Baruch scoffed.

"Cannot know your love."

"Oh." Baruch was taken aback by the straight-forward honest nature of the angel. He'd spoken often with him since he'd stumbled back through the orchards to meet Enoch, giving most of his weight to Balthamos. "But angels love also?"

"Yes." Balthamos answered again, simply, with pleasure. Already he'd noted the same curiosity as Enoch had in the younger brother, but Baruch lacked the hesitancy and spoke freely with Balthamos. Already, Baruch had shown the angel the nature he'd felt so strongly at his birth and most recently within the circle of men in the desert.

He'd attended quietly in his true formas Jared's wife, Baruch's mother, dipped a thick bone needle into a mixture of saps. She threaded prepared pig sinews through its end and tied a knot. Quickly, she pulled together the ragged sides of Baruch's shoulder and pushed the needle through, expertly wrapping it around again and pulling to force the skin to hold. Strongly, she repeated the process again and again to cover the entire wound. Baruch's blood ran quicker with each pull and twist of her deft hands. Balthamos could not know the strain it put on her, she, birth-giver, care-taker: to pierce the flesh of her son and bind him so, diligently, amongst his pained gasps and cries she worked.

Balthamos attended in wonder. Without flesh, he could not feel as Baruch did. He pushed himself out through the room, carefully expanding to adequately fill the space and began examining the feelings from mother and son, both slowly acquiescing into structures and melding themselves fast to the humans. He watched the structures in awe of their beauty. Never before had such forms gathered to Baruch. Never so strongly had Balthamos found them twisting and settling on a human. Their familiarity, until now, had remained coincidental – materials perhaps used by The Authority in his Creation of both Angel and Man. But such a small quantity for man, in comparison, Balthamos felt it was only an echoing of The Authority's hand in Creation rather than a true personal Creation, as the Angel had known. But Balthamos could no longer accept such a view of disregard. The beauty and awe he felt before him created and multiplied and attracted of its own. The forms shifted and danced golden around mother and son; Balthamos both delighted in and greatly feared them. This was not a stale phenomenon of an echo. Untied, untethered, reformed, those structures resembled his own being.


	11. Advance on Clouded Mountain

Ruta Skadi made haste toward the Clouded Mountain, wind and rain ripping coldly through her body. Reeling in mid-air she aimed her cloud pine once again toward her goal - only to dip wildly again to the left in effort to avoid a swarm of glinting spears shed from the hands of the angels above her. The witch queen Ruta Skadi stayed a mid-level course in her flight. Above her, angels clashed with spears and weapons more formidable, resorting to hand-to-hand combat as their weapons fell from their grasps. Lord Asriel's forces were more varied and brought vicious-looking firing weapons to counter those defending the Clouded Mountain. Asriel's machines creaked and burst into flame above her; shooting fire, shooting lead barbs, exploding as the enemy destroyed them and sent them crashing down onto the forces below.  
Sergi, her blue-throat dæmon, let out a sharp whistle and she swooped lower again, towards the other half of the battle. The ground forces were more recognizable to the witch-queen than those in the air; human largely, and human machinery which easily could have traveled from her own world. Her clan had stayed in the air but was assembled largely to the left - and far - side of Asriel's basalt fortress. The witches were valued for their sharpness in aim, picking off those of the Authority's angelic forces which slipped through Asriel's heavy artillery and combat forces.  
Another whistle from Sergi, this time low - a warning. She spun and pulled swiftly upward - cutting a vertical flight path through the battle. A cluster of the lighted beings fell past her speeding form, light passing dark. On the vertical path she could only urge herself onward, and faster. In the air attacks were not only from behind you or in front of you; attacks were all around you. The vertical path afforded her some breathing space from the lower battle and she allowed her concentration to stay fully on the path in front of her, knowing her dæmon would attend to their sides.  
She blinked quickly against the rain, knowing that this and the raindrops each distorted her invaluable eyesight against possible hazards. A screech - she cried out wildly.  
"Sergi"  
Small talons dug into her shoulder and she gasped. "I am fine, Ruta. Quickly, we must continue - there!" Her dæmon indicated a small opening in the formation where a portion of the Authority's forces had broken off to attack one of Asriel's flying war machines.  
Swooping in her path but maintaining the rise, she concentrated only on the opening - breaking through it and into the upper fight, into the midst of the enemy's forces. Screams around her, pounding down her ability to suppress her own fear. Sergi, warm at her shoulder, injured in some way she had not the time to attend to. Still, she could not feel the presence of Yambe-Akka, and flew on. A tearing, wrenching noise and an explosion in the air and a crowd of angels surged toward her in its wake: whether enemy or friend she had no time for either. She drew a small blade from a pouch at her side and slashed as the first lighted being overcame her path. The angel fell, soundlessly, and was quickly replaced by many more, but she'd passed them by then and their paths no longer intersected. Spears rained down from above, she pulled her flight to the side, swerving as Sergi continued calling in her ear. She hugged herself tightly into her cloud pine branch, as small as she could make herself, hoping the dark night would be her advantage.  
A howling behind her - _were they being tracked?_ A spear smacked against the butt of her branch and she curled her legs in tighter. Screams, commands called, and more flashes; all behind her now, but the shape in front of her was no less daunting. No witches attended to the Authority's forces - she could not blend in if she were seen.  
Ruta brought her feet down and landed lightly on the edge of the Clouded Mountain. A small shock spread up through her body as she took a step forward. She had landed at the outer bounds of the Mountain, some distance from the main gates if Asriel's maps held true. Bits of fog swirled and wrapped themselves around her ankles, leaving behind what she viewed as the ground of the Clouded Mountain - metals and earth so intertwined and brown as to become rusted dirt, littered with sharp cracks and crevasses she could see straight through, yet still walk over as if they were solid.  
Quickly, she ducked behind a series of pointed outcrops patterned in such a strange grid-like way and so angular she dared not think anything she had seen thus far was natural. She hid her cloud-pine branch, taking care to prise up the rocks around her and cover it properly and with care. She scratched a fingernail to the rocks as she laid them over her branch. Bits peeled off or flaked off depending on where she scratched. A few times pieces fell off and melted into a stream of color. She shuddered again, and another shock spread through her body from the ground up. She jumped at the sensation, reminded that escape only became a necessity when her task was finished.  
She looked toward the structure in front of her. It was immense, towering above her; an atrocity welded of abused earth distorted so far from its natural form as to incite a taste in her mouth not unlike that of naphtha lamp oil. It was not even something to which she could ascribe the quality of being a single structure. The Mountain was still the rust-stained creature she had seen from a distance, but now she saw more clearly the additions of strange materials. A series of shining spikes somewhere near the top pointed outward in a manner she could not account for. It became a series of squares and overlaps as she took in the structure - something a child could create from many separate elements by spilling them into a pile on the floor.  
"Can you fly?" she asked her dæmon, suddenly.  
"Yes. My feathers are in order. I only needed to rest a bit"  
"Stay here," she instructed. "Leave if you are found and lay this down as a signal for me." She broke a spray of needles from her cloud-pine branch. "If you leave, make your way to Lord Asriel; tell him I've made it here. But flee only if you must. If I return I will need you if we are to escape"  
"Yes," her dæmon replied solemnly.  
One last look at her branch in its hiding place. She hugged her dæmon tightly to her breast, sadly. A small wet stain darkened her already-black silk bodice, but neither human nor dæmon could avoid the task they were committed to. "I must go, Sergi. I will find this weapon for Asriel, and if possible we can become a force behind the success of this war"  
"And we must succeed," her dæmon responded simply, a smile in his tone.  
"We must," she affirmed. "Wait for me"  
Composing herself, Ruta Skadi began the mental processing which would bring her to a state of being unseen by the humans of her world. She had no convenient room to doubt this ability would work also with angels. She had only a hope and a task and she would carry both with her through the gates of the Clouded Mountain.

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As of the last chapter: a huge thank-you to my new beta-editor Laseri! Thanks for keeping me in line and making wonderful suggestions!


	12. Formations

The year fell slowly through Shammahah. Not only time but nature itself only deepened or fell in brightness as the contrasts of seasons came slightly across the brow of the village. The steady life of the village seemed only there to resolve Baruch into continuing - just as he'd been. Jared's youngest son. The young man attending to the orchards, smelling variously of manure or the sweet fruits growing there. 

Back at his scarred tree he ran his left hand down its trunk, savoring the contrast with his own scar.

"It never did heal." Baruch spoke not to himself, but to the angel beside him. "Even though father gave it the chance to live, even though it stands in this healthy grove. We couldn't care for it properly."

"It was cared for well," Balthamos attested. "The Almighty is great, and his creations do not lose value - even now this is beautiful. He heals all, in life or in death."

Baruch turned slowly away, eyes flashing. "Then why can't I heal?"

The angel started, unaware of what truly occupied Baruch's mind. The young man stood solidly, iangrily,/i the angel realized and smiled. "It is your soul, all that knowledge and experience you've gained through your living which is important. All the beauty of The Creator - you are yourself, whole."

"Whole," Baruch repeated, the word refusing to comfort him. _A man without his strength._ "A man without his strength," he faced Balthamos, "I cannot be whole. I cannot see what you do."

"No?"

"No."

Balthamos puzzled. Enoch spoke of first showing his people the beauty of The Creator. In seeing that beauty, his people could learn to accept Him. By accepting Him they could begin to reach. And then -

"I will try to show you."

The angel reached out and touched Baruch's shoulder, lightly. Baruch flinched - he'd not felt that touch since that night. Again, the memories came back of Chisiya and he instinctively brought a hand to his chest as if to protect the wound she'd left. Balthamos moved to touch to his forehead. Coolness. Again his body recognized the angel's touch but now he relaxed under it, closing his eyes down to comfortable slits in the arid orchard. He waited a moment under the hand before re-opening his eyes.

And he saw.

"Balthamos..." he breathed. Around him glistened a covering of golden movements. As if a wetness in the sand could spring forth such bits of light, countless and gathering toward Baruch just as the natural bits still sand would cover his feet. His chest tightened in surprise and wonder - a reaction - waves looping and gathering nearer to him, a caress he could not feel but awe forced him to desire. He reached to no avail. The bits of golden light dropped and swooped from his hands. _Not evading_ he wondered. A series of the specks suddenly vibrated with intensity and gathered themselves into an intricate pattern, diving downward when the pattern reached a complexity his eyes scraped at for meaning, and formed a many-sided fragile globe threading itself through the prevailing stream surrounding him. It held steadily and delicately directly before him. "Balthamos," he breathed again, more strongly, "what is this?"

"Now I've shown you."

The vision disappeared suddenly as the angel moved away. Baruch reached out and gripped, lost against the scarred olive tree, leaning heavily on it for support.

"Wait!" Baruch called sharply and beckoned for the angel to come closer again. "I lost it!"

"It is there."

"You can see? All the time you can see that?" Baruch demanded.

"I see what is there, yes," Balthamos replied.

"But I don't."

"You have forgotten. All humans have forgotten. That is why you are separate from The Almighty and we are still one with Him."

"Why?" Baruch pushed, unwilling for the vision to be so small, to know he could see it again. "How can you see? What is it?"

Balthamos paused. The young man mistook the silence for reprimand and began asking again, less passionately but still in earnest.

"The formations," Balthamos began. Baruch felt his head throb slightly, as if Balthamos hadn't said a word for what he'd seen but had spoken the thing itself, and it carried some power. A weight just balanced enough to make the word physical. "What did you see when I touched your forehead?"

"Colors. A brilliance like light all bound into a stream. Things twisted into knots but fell apart. And a globe formed," he added.

"What you've called the stream is your self. It would be your nature - what divine ingredients make you." Balthamos became quieter, suddenly uncertain of what he'd shown the young man. _Divine ingredients_ - he'd spoken so lightly showing nature and the melding of The Authority. Baruch was a human - _should he know this?_ Conflict the angel shouldn't have learned began - _why should Balthamos question?_ But Baruch did.

"That is what you see?" Baruch questioned further. He'd asked. Simply. Baruch _wanted_ to know. Want. A human desire? Did the angel have _want?  
_

"Balthamos?" His meditations were interrupted.

"Yes. That is how I see you - not as the human body but as the formations." Again, Baruch felt the word gained a presence with itself. "The globe you saw was at its outermost, my own nature."

"That was-" Baruch cut off sharply as his arm fell from its prop and he dropped to the ground. He'd been supporting himself with his left arm. He cursed and beat a fist into the ground properly. _Back, again._ He rose and brushed at himself out of embarrassment rather than cleanliness. Baruch faced the angel. "May I see you again sometime?"

"You will." Balthamos made the promise. "Sometime."


	13. Confessions pt I

The horse fair. Again. The scents and the people. Crowds. A full temple for Enoch each morning, confessions throughout the day. Gamblers by the dozen. A procession of the horse traders walking in and out, seeking Enoch to admit their deceptions. A small colt prodded with a well-concealed fired rod would run, no matter the split in his foreleg where hoof met skin. Animals kept meek through abuse never lived the lifespan the sellers offered. A line of traders, all with the same confession. Enoch hesitated, but assured them each they could mend their sinful ways. 

It was only a small section in the back Enoch and Baruch had boarded from the remainder of the temple, but it held draw. Behind the dark wooden knotty panels a man was separated from the rest of the world. Enoch would not judge, but he would be there, and he would offer himself to help those who wanted it of him.

"Do they repent?" Baruch asked his brother.

"I cannot say," Enoch replied. "I cannot make anyone do a thing they don't wish to. I only try to help people realize their true wish for The Authority and that the actions they take do not allow them the closeness with Him which they desire."

Baruch didn't continue questioning. "I'll go down to the potluck." He smiled to Enoch and left the temple.

Enoch watched his brother's back shrink into the throng of people outside, elbows poking out the figure of the solid back as he'd hooked his thumbs onto the strap of the bag across his back. "He worries me," Enoch said quietly. "That is my confession."

Striding easily, Baruch's lean figure snaked through the crowd, outpacing those going his direction and outmanoeuvring those in the opposing direction. The dust in the air thickened and the heat spoke in fumes as he neared the trader's stalls. Shouts and curses filled the air as one of the tied beasts inevitably refused to perform properly for potential buyers and leaned heavily against its post, foam developing at the corners of its mouth. Baruch walked past. He was learning to keep thoughts aimed at a task. He would meet Marda again, didn't want to be less of the youth she thought him; he added a smile to the quick-moving frame he pushed through the crowd.

"Baruch!"

He paused at the call, scanned the crowd. His name wasn't entirely uncommon, yet...he sucked in a breath. _Chestnut mare! But..._ "No," he breathed sharply but didn't move. He quickly felt the spell working again. _Chisiya_ deep plum skirts brushing at the crowd bumping past her small frame, she'd gathered the fabric closely into her palm. Her breathing sharp and heavy, strands of the long chestnut-slick hair sticking against her forehead. _Had she been running to catch him?_

"Chisiya, I -"

She cut him off quickly, falling against him before he'd even unhooked his thumbs from behind the strap against his chest. He pulled his hands out awkwardly from beneath her weight and wrapped his arms around her. Still too surprised to recall anything but the truest feelings he'd had for her, Baruch was unable to dredge up the sadness she'd left in him.

"They told me you died that night. They said..." she trailed off, muffled against his shirt and stepped away suddenly. "Come with me." Now it was she who grabbed his hand and led him twisting through the crowd. Baruch felt light and drugged. He followed easily, was unsure if he could have left. They moved past the vibrant crowds of colorful sellers and stamping hooves. She pulled him behind the horse stalls at the far end of the crowd: where the horses were undesirable and the sellers called loudly to attract customers from the more fit stallions and mares at the center of the fair.

Crouching, she picked at the back corner of one of the food store tents and peeked inside. Chisiya promptly made a face and moved to the next one, repeating the process and giving it her approval by flipping aside the sand-colored flaps to wave Baruch inside.

Inside, Baruch began. "Chisiya, I -"

But she cut him off again. "Baruch, I love you!" He caught himself backing into the center post in the tent and sent the canvas shuddering slightly. His head swam at her words. He'd been so wracked with uncertainty over everything the past year and her sudden sureness alarmed him. She didn't move to embrace him again, though. "We need to leave. The end of the horse fair," she added. "You remember what I told you last year? About the men I travel with? I need to leave. We need to leave."

"Chisiya, I can't. I still don't know -"

"You don't love me?" Her expression suddenly flicked to an innocent fury. She stared at Baruch, eyes pleading. "You said you'd protect me. You did! You said it and you did it! Baruch...you're here now..."

"I didn't think I'd see you again." Baruch looked away from Chisiya. "I did say those things, that's true. I don't know that I love you, I don't think I can yet." Chisiya's face dropped and she leaned back against a pile of straw stacked for the horses.

"You won't go with me?"

"I didn't say. I'd need to decide on that first."

"But why did you let me lead you here? I could've been taking you to get robbed but you trusted me!" Her face twisted in passion Baruch couldn't trace. It was almost an accusation. Her almond eyes caught his. "Because it's me, right? Can you trust me now after the men in my camp tried to kill you?"

Baruch leaned toward her and took her hand. He motioned for them to both take a seat on the straw piled near the back corner of the tent. "I still trust you. The men you travel with, who take care of you - they were probably worried about you."

"They'll be worried now."

It was a reminder their time was short. Baruch cringed to think of the men again. He pulled his hand up to rub at the scar with the memory.

"What is it?" she asked.

Her voice was filled with concern and Baruch realized quickly that his face had contorted to reflect the painful memory. He pulled his shirt back from the collar to reveal the scar. Chisiya gasped and touched it lightly.

"Does it hurt? They did that to you?"

"Yes. One of their weapons, but it doesn't hurt anymore. It's fine really," he reassured her as her fingers traced down the scar. _Warm fingers_ Baruch realized suddenly, intensely aware of her closeness to him. _Warm and strong with feeling, even touching his broken self_. Dark almond eyes moved slowly from his shoulder to meet his gaze.

"Baruch," she said, and laid her head coolly against his own hot cheek. "I'm sorry."

---------------------------------------------------

I edited the summary description on the main page to add that the higher rating of the fanfiction is due to violence, which has yet to appear. Just an additional note from me, that is the reason of the rating in case I've scared anyone off writing a B&B - or this sort of obscure ending. It does say "pt I" in the chapter, though, as if the next chapter might pick up exactaly where this left off. We'll see. Special Feature: now with editing! Thanks Laseri.


	14. Balthamos

A sudden weight shift and Chisiya was on top of him, still pressed against him closely. "I'm sorry, Baruch." She left a light kiss somewhere on the side of his neck, just above his scarline, and pulled her warmth away from him as quickly as it had enveloped him; now standing over him. He didn't move, watching her for some indication of what to do. 

"You are strange." Chisiya smiled and turned, backing out of the tent in one fluid and strong movement which left Baruch feeling overheated, his mind numbing over from the echoes of her departing plum skirts.

"Chisiya..." Baruch leaned back against the rough canvas and pushed the back of his head into the fabric. He allowed himself to wander into a moment of fevered happiness before the puzzlement of the encounter took hold of him.

"Baruch?"

A voice. Very near. He started, but relaxed quickly. "Balthamos?"

"I am here." The brilliance of the angel took form near him before dimming into a buzz of golden lights. _All dancing_ Baruch thought and smiled, still given over to the thrill he felt.

"Baruch?" The angel spoke again, more urgently now. "Baruch, what is this?"

"What?" Baruch stood and began plucking at bits of straw which clung around the bends of his knees.

"What is this?" Balthamos repeated. "What has happened?"

Baruch stopped and flushed quickly. "What do you mean? Nothing has happened. Nothing." He spoke strongly but without anger.

Silence. He looked to the angel.

"Nothing? You cannot -" Balthamos cut himself off and quickly laid a cool hand on Baruch's shoulder. "See," he finished. "See."

Brilliance. Blinding. Baruch was dazzled again. Swarms of golden arcs ebbed against the slight movements he made and rippled in place, forcing his vision of the tent from sight, gathering intensely and crowding up when he stilled. Vibrations swirled from the soles of his feet through his back and up to the nape of his neck and he coughed quickly, at once confused and awed. "Balthamos!" he cried and stumbled grasping for support, bumping again into the central pole of the tent; again the movement shed ripples through the canvas.  
"Ah! Balthamos!" Again he called to the angel. "Balthamos!"

"Still here."

"I can't see you!" Baruch searched through the sparkling torrents, feeling a strong sideways pull which left him vertiginous and uncertain of himself. "Balthamos!"

"Right here." The structure in front of him. A sphere. Shifting and breaking apart and remolding itself all at once. Dazzling and blinding and familiar. Balancing himself, back against the sturdy pole, Baruch reached out. Glad recognition flashed through his eyes and danced currents of the light out past his fingertips. He brushed a hand against a softness where the sphere seemed to melt and shift at the edge of his sight. The light fell.

With a suddenness that staggered him Baruch found himself seeing the dull tent interior once again, feeling only the heat and the confusion of the day. "What happened?" Baruch stood alone, lips dried and lashes beating heavily to adjust to the light. "Balthamos?" He spoke quietly now, feeling a sudden loneliness.

"I'm here," the angel responded in turn, quietly.

"But I can't see you."

Silence met him. "Balthamos?"

"Yes."

"What has happened?"


	15. Hand at the Gates

The gates of the Clouded Mountain stood solidly open in front of Ruta Skadi. Mammoth and delicate, they appeared to the clan queen's eyes - a thin pattern of spirals twisting slowly upward, rusted a deep orange or grey depending on where her eyes fell. _Writhing_ she thought with a small shock, but slipped close to the side wall where one of the massive gate-pillars stood.

Constant movement. Creatures, all a mass of light and motion slipped past her in one fluid outpouring. Angels; all tasked, all holding a weapon, following some silent parade out to the edge of the mountain where they leapt - human-formed - just as the angels the witch herself had traveled with. The cliff formations of the mountain rose around her and shifted suddenly to flatten further on the edge as a new group of angels surged past.

She moved swiftly away behind her pillar, still pressed into the wall side-stepping the gate and feeling the shifting motion through the silk covering her back. She shuddered briefly against the sensation. The angels still moved past her, unnoticing. She let out a slow breath and strengthened her resolve to focus on maintaining the ability to blend into the constantly shifting environment. She fixed the image of the movements of a small stream in her mind. _How does one remain unnoticed in a realm of motion?_

A push from the pillar and Ruta Skadi took her first solid step away from the edges and through the gates. Bleak, barren, a North of the winter devoid of the hibernation of life. A dull brown landscape, flat yet broken, lay in front of her, peeling and ridden with material inconsistencies she'd found outside the gates. Another shock, similar to those she'd felt outside, ran up from the ground she stood on and she visualised the movements of a bird diving into the stream current. Another step and with a small pop a sudden ruckus of divine proportions beat instantly against the witch. She gasped, but maintained her thoughts on a singular purpose and strode with her head down against the noise. The swarms around her were no longer silent, but the cause of every screeching and pounding she felt. The vibrations, she now realized, came when, with a commanding shout, a full platoon of the lighted beings called a response and crashed wings heavily at the air around them. Rising dust and flakes of light choked at the witch, but she became more confident in the apparent tasked chaos around her.

Not far ahead, as she stumbled over a landscape she found repulsive in its malformed creation, a crack broke through the main structure of blocks and tumblings. She saw no other doors, and made for it in a gait stiffened with concentration, looping away from the angels again to once again embrace the outer walls and lengthen both her path and her distance from the enemy. She made swift progress at the edge, focusing on the crack ahead, one hand kept against the wall to maintain balance when her eyesight couldn't adjust to the movement around her.

Approaching, she found the crack larger than she'd thought. Sudden realization hit her. She moved backward with purpose, away from the opening just as the new shift finished and the crack let loose a froth of lighted wings and deep black spear heads of the Authority's forces.

Wind ripped past the witch suddenly and she found herself alone, at the edge of the opening, fingers running swiftly over the edge of the crack to ensure it was solid. She looked further in, hoping to see more than the blackness she found. Bits of false blue hues fell through her vision as her eyes strained to adjust, seeking color. She stepped through.

And was met with a length of frozen blade pressed firmly against her throat, the assailant's other arm enclosing her waist in swift capture.

"You are our prisoner now, spy-witch Ruta Skadi. You will come with me."

----------------------------

Thanks Laseri!


	16. Confessions pt II

"I ask forgiveness of The Authority for those sins I have committed and the good which I have failed to perform." 

The young dark girl kneeled down with Enoch and bent her head. Dark hair fell around her frame, further adding to the effect of being encompassed in a single notion. Enoch had led the girl back to the prayer room and locked the door. Inside, all sins were heard only by God, and by His chosen man Enoch.

Enoch knew his procedure well; he kneeled with the people when he asked them to kneel in submission and prayer to The Authority. The words he spoke he chose carefully, granting the power of forgiveness always to its rightful place at the feet of The Creator. He prayed with the people.

_Their failures are mine also if I am to help them._ Enoch smiled as the girl raised her head in confusion. "I ask forgiveness," he began.

"--of The Authority?"

"--of The Authority for those sins..." His voice strengthened the words, but she remained quiet and bowed her head again. "For those sins I have committed and for the good which I have -"

"--for the good which I have failed to perform," she ended with a slight smile.

"All together?" She nodded and together they repeated the words again. She was still nervous; Enoch knew some people were. This was not a world, nor a village, where one spoke of anything evil. In some circles, to speak evil was to invite it into one's life.

"Please be at peace." Enoch invited her to sit at a stool across from the one he took. "The Authority is all-caring and all-forgiving if we attend to Him with a pureness of purpose. You are here to receive His forgiveness?"

She nodded again and scratched at her cheek with a fingernail.

"Then you should have no fear. The courageous face The Authority for His forgiveness: you are very brave, and He will love you more for that." He wasn't sure if his words or his talking encouraged her, but she moved into the stool and fidgeted with impatience. "Would you like to begin?"

"I can't -" she started but quickly regressed, " - no. No, I don't know." Enoch held still while he watched her. She plucked at her plum skirts and pulled an elbow into her stomach. Whatever she wanted to say was taking some effort.

"I - if something isn't my fault? What can I do then?"

"I'm sorry, I'm afraid I might need to hear more before I can try to advise you in The Authority's path for your future."

"But that's the problem!"

She yelled, but pulled her arms further against her chest - together expanding and retreating. "I don't understand if I can have the future I want."

"If you understand your life needs change, then you have the ability to do so from that point onward," Enoch tried to counsel within her vague framework.

"Chisiya. They told me that was my name. I don't know anymore - I can't remember that far back if it's what my parents called me," she ended with a sharp glare toward the locked door.

"Your parents?" Enoch encouraged her to continue.

"Dead." She stopped. "I think," she added. "My father might be alive; some of the men won't"  
She trailed off.

"Chisiya." Enoch touched a hand to her knee. "I promise, as a man, that I will not judge you from the things I hear in this room. I cannot judge you. As a man I may only offer comfort and advice. Will you allow me these things?"

"I will." Chisiya nodded slowly and looked at the man sitting across from her. Dark almond eyes moved slowly across his face, noting the shape of his nose, sliding over his jawline - set thickly against the smile he maintained. She smiled back suddenly, leaping off her seat in a rapid movement to embrace Enoch and knock him from his stool.

She laughed and let him go as he gasped and struggled to right himself against the knotted wooden panelling. Now his face reflected the confusion he felt. He pasted his smile in place and tried to refocus his thoughts to concern for the girl and how to lead her to The Authority.

"I'm sorry, may I?" This time she slowly and awkwardly hugged herself to him. Enoch kept still against his wall support; his procedure now changed, he became uncertain.

"There's someone you remind me of. I'd like him to be here." She paused. "I'd like him to hug me back, just like this, and then I'd tell him everything. And then he'd leave, he'd never want to see me again and I'd have no one to be with like this. No one would love me ever." She made a small noise against his chest.

_Crying?_ Enoch wondered, but gathered his sense of obligation and hugged the girl back. "The Authority loves you," he reassured her. "You were created from his love. Remember that always, in any sadness you have, you were loved so greatly that you were created as an individual."

"Created for this life?" she intoned quietly, and tilted her head up to see Enoch better. "You don't even know! Does The Authority know what he created me for? I travel with a group of men, traders they call themselves, travelling everywhere, on and off horses - murderers! That's what! That's all they are, they steal from people then kill them. Bodies everywhere out there - and blood - gets all over everything. Then making _us_ wash those clothes. She pulled away and stood angrily in the middle of their small space amongst fallen stools. "And what else! Me, they told me I was rescued from my execution in Egypt. I've never been there! I don't know that place, just what they tell me. And then they tell me, because they protect me from the men still after me, that I owe them. You know what they take as payment? You know, right? You're a man!" She threw the accusation at him and glowered darkly from where she stood. "You know."

Enoch didn't move. His thoughts betrayed the truth of the possibility and his gaze darkened as he felt simultaneous repulsion and pity for the girl in front of him. Chisiya shifted her weight and straightened herself to smile blankly at him. "Yes?" She reached a hand to his chest. Enoch stiffened his back against the wall and breathed slowly, clenching his jaw fiercely. "You get to hear about rape a lot here? The dirty men that put their hands all over your body - " she ran the edges of her thumbs down Enoch's shoulders, "and their dirty words - those are sins too, right?" _So close!_ Enoch could feel the heat from her hands and she pressed a palm flat to his chest. "So much sinning going on in the desert, preacher, but can a woman control it when a man takes her like that? And then everything gets so hot..." She pushed herself into Enoch's chest, taunting him. He caught his breath and turned from her gaze.

"Please, stop this."

"Why?!" She backed away and pushed him down in anger. "You wanted to hear, didn't you? Isn't this what you always ask for?" A small sandaled foot landed in his side with a stomp. "Everyone's right. You are a fool." Bending down, she stole the key from his pocket and quickly unlocked the door for herself. "You can't help anyone. Your Authority's rotten. If he exists, he's too cruel. I don't want any of your approval." She slammed the door and left hotly.

Enoch stared ahead blankly, wishing the hot stones of the floor cool against his head. Everything had gone so quickly. He shut his eyes and breathed slowly for some time. His body felt hot, his mind rang blankly as he tried to understand. He felt numb. All his preparations, all his prayers and begging for the goodness The Authority had granted him, the time he had spent in wonder of the world and its Creator, his own special selection by The Authority himself. His own need to help, to care for people and to ask them to care. And still, he was unprepared. He sat up slowly and folded his hands as he shifted his legs underneath him.

"Balthamos?"

"Always here." The angel came into bright visibility near the door. Enoch would not turn.

"You said once that the strength of an angel is less than the strength of a man?"

"Yes," Balthamos replied.

Enoch sighed and bent his head.

"I ask forgiveness," he began quietly, "of The Authority for those sins I have committed and the good which I have failed to perform."


	17. Unchosen

Baruch found his feet on a path homeward when his head cleared. Sandals fell rippling their shadows across aged cobbles while he picked his way slowly back across the horse fair, keeping from the crowds in case any of his attackers had been present. He avoided his customary stride, keeping his hands from clasping around their familiar leather strap across his chest. Hands and arms were for balance, defending, and fighting back if an attack came. He'd been in fights before; it came of being the younger brother of the unusual preacher.

He'd asked the angel to leave him in the tent after viewing the unsettling golden structure. Now Baruch became acutely aware of missing his presence near him. Balthamos could watch around him and especially, Balthamos would talk to him, much differently than with other people; Balthamos seemed to lack any pre-determined opinions when he spoke with Baruch. The angel always seemed to form and change ideas from the moment he spoke. _It would be good to talk with him now_ A small unoccupied part of him found an instant to be jealous of Enoch. Baruch kept the thought behind the strain of alertness and the wonder at what Balthamos had shown him. His curiosity cleaved him in two, one part wondering at the return of Chisiya and the other wondering at what the angel had seen as Baruch changed.

His stride returned to normal as he rounded the chipped stone corner of his own home. Two quick steps down and a slight duck brought Baruch inside, where he shed his sack and pulled across a small side-door to a supply shed for the orchards. From the other side of the door he heard his mother's voice beckoning to him, but he moved automatically and shouldered a number of sizeable tools before retreating backward from the side-shed.

"Oh good!" his mother said as he backed into her. He jumped slightly as her sudden appearance startled his clouded mind. "You are going out to the South orchard, then? Jacob said you'd forget but both our sons are so good with helping. Don't forget to take water down there from the well; the store is running low there."

She gave his left shoulder a quick squeeze as she watched uncertainty cross over her son's face.

"Don't worry like that, you can carry it just fine," she added before retreating back to her table, where she pounded flour cakes out long and thin to wrap in stiff cloth for baking.

Considering his new task, Baruch tilted his head back to re-enter the shed and drop a few of the extra tools he'd gathered before meeting his father out in the field. Relieved of the majority of his burden, he made a swift beeline to the well where he traded a large tub for the pruning and cutting oddments he'd carried. Thoughts now occupied with the weight, he went to meet Jacob in the next orchard.

"Enoch?" Baruch paused in his stride and shifted his right hand further down the tub. "I was supposed to meet father."

"I took over here." Enoch sat with his back against one of the trees, obviously lost in thought, but not working. "I'm sorry, did you need him?"

"Not if you're working, but I could use another set of hands filling the water stores over here."

Enoch nodded and stood up. "You'll be fine with that, I'll be back presently."

The family kept their water stored underneath a hidden wooden panel in the ground. Baruch finished filling one of the dwindling water jugs and held the panel off for Enoch. He smiled when Enoch came back carrying a tub filled to the brim, more than Baruch dared to lift.

"Enoch? Is Balthamos here?"

Enoch blinked as water splashed on him from filling the second jug. "Of course," he responded. "Balthamos stays with me."

"I'm glad." Baruch replaced the panel and the two picked up their tubs for another trip to the well and back. "I need to talk with him, if I may."

The manner of Baruch's request made Enoch uneasy. Very suddenly, the elder brother had a vision of himself as mediator between the high angels and the unworthy humankind. It put him in such an elevated position he mentally blocked himself from the man he was, just for a moment. A smile crossed his face. Something cold pressed its fingers into points at the back of his mind. _My failure with the confessions_ he told himself quietly, and composed himself.

"You can talk with me," Enoch said encouragingly.

"If it's not a bother, I'd rather talk with Balthamos."

The cold points pushed themselves at Enoch again. He slid his jaw sideways.

"Please, Baruch. I had a difficult confession this afternoon, please let me try to help you." He stopped them both just as they reached the well. "I'm your brother."

"It's a little strange..." Baruch trailed.

"Please let me try?"

Baruch nodded almost imperceptibly. He couldn't ask Enoch about the golden flowing structure, but his other problem was Chisiya.

"Someone asked me today to leave our village with them. I'm not sure if I should or shouldn't." Baruch paused and looked around as if they were being watched. _Which,_ he reflected _is true enough if Balthamos is here_. The thought put him at ease to continue. "It's the girl from the horse fair last year, the one I told you about that night-"

"The one who nearly got you killed, Baruch!" Enoch cut him off in a whirl of brotherly protection. "Is it even safe to see her?"

"I know that much! I know the people she travels with do awful things, that's why she needs to run away if we want to be together. They're just trying to protect her, I told you that. That's why she stays with them; Chisiya needs to keep moving so the men from Egypt can't find her!" Baruch spoke sharply with an unfamiliar passion.

_Chisiya._

Enoch fell back against the low well wall with a thump. The name connected into a place in his mind, a freezing and flaring twined together into confusion. _The girl he'd met in his confession today._ A new coldness was eating at him now. _The man she'd said he'd reminded her of..._

"Chisiya," he repeated.

"Yes, Chisiya! And I know the danger but I can't think it's bad that she's here again. She reminds me of-" Baruch flushed and cut himself off quickly before he began thinking of the chestnut mare he had in mind. "She's beautiful and passionate and strange and dangerous but it's good and I don't know if I love her but I do know that I feel for her and when she pulled me to the storage tent today-"

"What!" Enoch shouted and felt a sudden sickness. _She's trapped Baruch_. Sudden anger heated his face as he thought of his own humiliation as Chisiya had pressed herself into him, her taunting words echoing as Baruch's mouth moved with words deaf to his brother. _And then everything gets so hot..._ He watched as the younger brother shifted in embarrassment over the confession. _Baruch!_ Enoch did feel hot.

_Baruch..._ His thoughts ran. Spots blinked into his vision and Enoch slid to the ground on his knees. _My brother!_ He coughed heavily as the spots turned into lights. Baruch, beside him, kneeling, pounding his back, a cooling hand. _One like him, blood free from the sins of Cain, free to choose good. He'd prayed. He'd prayed so hard, so long. The Authority loved him, The Authority must love him, The Authority had chosen him. All his prayers..._The light became blinding as he continued coughing. His head felt overheated, heavy, something there was expanding, needed to stop, needed to leave. Pain. He flinched. Pain he'd never felt in his head. Fear and despair broke through the sudden pain and settled. _She was trapping Baruch! No angel would come to his brother now. Baruch would never be chosen._ Tears fell down his face, but Enoch didn't notice. _Lost. He'd lost the brother he loved to the world_.

"Enoch! Enoch!" Baruch was shaking him heavily now by the shoulders, his left hand continually slipping from its firm grasp.

Enoch looked into a face filled with panic. His confusion intensified and he closed his eyes to the world of sin before hugging his brother. Baruch hugged him back as Enoch became calmer. Neither moved until long after Enoch's hoarse coughing had stopped.

The cooling hand fell on him again, pulling him lovingly, graciously into blackness as a single thought rang clearer and clearer.

_Lost. Baruch was lost._


	18. Drawn Divine

Down. Down, spiralling an impossible distance with the darkness-generated false colors pressing in around, lighted occasionally with a deep current or spark - similar to anbaric current but composed of shifting tones, streaking sometimes blue sometimes a deep silver - running underneath the crystalline ramp. The ramp jolted heavily, altering in substance against each step the clan queen took. Somewhere far outside and high above her, Ruta Skadi felt the presence of her dæmon, and beckoned silently for him to go back to Lord Asriel.

A thickening numbness at her wrists reminded of the clasps there - crystalline, made of the same stuff as the ramp, but unchanging. The angel who had caught her kept close, but not in a manner to suggest that Ruta Skadi could escape even if she were to elude this single captor.

A string of lighted flames began blazing in series suddenly near the clan queen's feet. They leapt underneath the crystal in a game resembling a child's game of tag, but with with a fierceness of threat somewhere in the rules. Strong and red, the flames danced under her feet in short spouts, forcing her to step gingerly at first, then confidently on top of their spaces underneath the crystalline ramp.

"It takes some time to light the more vacant portions of the Clouded Mountain." The angel spoke almost apologetically, as if a guest had arrived unannounced and found his room to be the untidy blemish in the midst of elegance.

Ruta Skadi didn't ask to where she was being led, the end was the same regardless of the means. If she could learn some truth about the weapon before she died, she would know at least. For Asriel, she would know. The ramp began levelling out by degrees. Very slowly the witch found herself stepping with the balance of assured footing. Still farther below the twisting ramp, a small sound began echoing up the passage. It rose and howled, growing slowly into a call as the two continued downward.

"Please!" The small whine melded into a voice and the witch narrowed her eyes at the lighted being quickly, still chasing hope, looking for a moment of escape.

"You will not escape from here, spy-witch." A voice spoke from behind her and a new light gleamed along the passageway. Another of the angels had followed them. Ruta Skadi turned to see her second captor. Behind her, brilliance shifted and danced in some untraceable rhythm. It remained a complicated procession of light a moment longer in the witch's eyes before suddenly appearing in the human form she'd become familiar with. She blinked; the transition had been so seamless she believed for a moment the remaining lighting of the ramp had confused her vision.

"Please!" The howl began again, thin and inhuman, but close. "The light! Allow me the light!"

The first angel captor turned with a perceptible smirk and beckoned for Ruta Skadi to continue ahead, where the path opened into a narrow and squat, but lengthy room. The witch walked calmly towards the centre of the room where a dais of the outside rock-substance rose. Its motion was smooth and she watched while it rose beyond the height of a simple dais into a length of pillar. The pillar stopped with a gust of wind just below the height of her chest and she watched the by now familiar shifting of the substance: now rock, now a flurried movement of some reddening and slightly pulsing mineral streaking through, leaving behind dimples in a solid pillar of white marble. Very quickly, she felt a deep craving to touch a hand to the surface and press her fingers along the indents there.

She approached it with intent. Left hand caught right as she began the movement to reach, and for the briefest of moments her calm left her and she bared her teeth in frustration. Just the time it had taken her to become angry allowed the witch to realize this was not truly her impulse, and she jumped back quickly from the short pillar, still mesmerized by it, but now more wary.

"This is writing," she said finally, looking more closely now with hesitation over the indents left in the pillar by the red shifting.

"It is old." The second angel spoke now, much lighter, a voice more melodious than the first, a woman, the witch thought and confirmed the notion with a quick glance. "This is what you wished to see?"

Ruta Skadi was captive, but still a queen. She stiffened and aimed her bright glare at the two beings as they moved across from where she stood.

"You wish to negotiate?" The male angel spoke again.

"You have placed me in a situation of no negotiation if I'm correct." Politicking the clans had given her passion the cover of politeness where pride would not allow care.

"This is what you wished to see," the woman repeated again, not a question now. "It is your flesh which feels the draw here, only the sinless can go unaffected. Do you feel the pull, witch?"

Ruta Skadi stepped back again, touching the wall briefly with her fingertips and gaining a small shock through her arms. Her hands came forward instinctively to rub at suddenly freed wrists. She looked down in wonder to see her wrists again clasped; thick metal bands ran around them, bound in the middle by an oddly triangular shape. As she stared at the new bonds the thought began winding through her brain that they had all been here far longer than she suspected; her mind had been fooling her, the metal bands had chafed the skin of her wrists for ages. The triangular shape snaked briefly along its own length, remaining an odd triangle but moving still. She couldn't resist the chill she felt and allowed it to pass slowly, a blanket over her while she watched the snaking continue. She looked toward the pillar, suddenly understanding.

The urge pushed at her in waves, building and crashing anxiously as her eyes widened and her chest fell to continue the motion of exhaling. "There is no draw," she said firmly, set in concentration and glare focusing alternately on either angel. She would not look again to the pillar. A particular narrow triangular slot beckoned to her, and she plunged her consciousness into the concentration she had studied and mastered for her craft. She held onto the fierce passion within herself, mentally focusing on reciting various spells and skills she'd mastered - creating a poultice to treat frostbite, reading animal signs in a hunt, a song to the goddess Yambe-Akka, focusing a thought to her dæmon Sergi over long distances. Physically, she remained locked in steady glare with the angels, breathing more slowly, but unmoved from her position at the edge of the room.

"Very well," the woman angel said after allowing Ruta Skadi another minute to concede her will. "We will see when your strength will fail you." The lilting melody in her voice was laced with hatred so powerful the witch turned her head from it, feeling a gritty coating glaze closely over what good she remembered of the world outside; her most dear, her soul felt a coating of grime. Despair!

The room had changed suddenly without her notice. The floor had become rigid, a pale yellow metal, poorly plated with dents and rises scrabbling for haphazard purchase in the squat room. Thin knobbed poles of flaking metal protruded in a dense pentagram around the pillar.

"'Is this the 'Metatron's Cube,' you will wonder." The male angel had moved round to the other side of the pillar, leaning a hand against one of the poles. The surface made a slight gasping-like noise against his light touch. He squared his shoulders and pulled heavily on the pole with both hands - wrenching the panelled edges from the metal around the pole base - and held a spear pointed at Ruta Skadi.

"Humans, gifted with Creation by The Authority's love and care, abused their sinful freedom." The female angel appeared suddenly opposite Ruta Skadi, also bearing a spear, point downward but not touching the ground. "They began to believe they were greater, could control things like destiny, put off their own deaths - their own joyful return to Him." The angel moved aside. Ruta Skadi suddenly realized the female angel wasn't speaking to her. Her eyes traced the room to reveal no other probable target, but the angel continued speaking, now in another direction entirely. "Then they wanted to control more, all the worlds if they could, even Creation if their slimed palms could grasp it."

They made a weapon," she continued, "a very powerful one, which their ignorance thought another simple human tool. They named it highly, God Killer, and they used it foolishly, as they must from their lowness. They thought they could threaten Him, but they cannot. And although the Kingdom will bear it, the weapon was lost to us." The angel adjusted her grip on the spear. "These, we have made. But even with His limitless love, and our limitless devotion to Him, we cannot recreate the blade. Humanity put their sin into its creation, a thing we cannot do. But for their belief in that weapon, it will be The Authority's."

The pillar in front of the witch shifted again, twisting and writhing, splitting itself in a vertical scar down its side, forming budding trunks from its top with a wild screech she recognized from metal working on metal, the speech of the sooted mining machinery used by the Tartars. Ruta Skadi watched silently and concentrated on redefining her urge away from a need to go toward the now-forming misshapen tree. Its movement repulsed her anew in the tainted room, each limb pushing away from the insides of the still-solid bottom pillar. As the top buds pushed further into stubbed limbs the red crawlings gained their surface as well, a blackish shifting layered underneath, scaling and flattening the limbs. Twigs sprang and reached to the low ceiling where they began spreading vine-like in pulsing ripples and sticking fast where they grew.

The witch had not seen the movement, but as the need to touch the newly-sprouted tree weakened with its slowing growth she felt a new presence nearby. Two men. Human men. She risked a glance.

One with a brimmed hairline, black and thick, thickened skin and eyes glazing over as he stared to pillared tree. The other far younger, lighter hair and eyes the clan queen recognized quickly as typical of those in the regions south of Lapland. He spoke quickly, a mumbling prayer in a language she did not recognize. And he stepped forward, very clear in his need. The two angels watched from nearby.

She would not. The clan queen quickly pulled her hands into fists before her face and bit solidly into the clasp. She dug her nails into her palms to ignore the man and bit harder at the clasp, teeth loosing friction and sliding heavily into her lower lip as the strange triangular clasp shifted. She cursed quickly and tasted blood inside her mouth. She bit again. The wild creatures of the North knew what bound them in a hunter's trap. The possibility to escape death was where the hunted could find their opportunity at winning the hunt.

Deep violet scraps of light fell through the room somewhere, bringing visions of the Aurora to the witch. She continued biting the clasp in quick snaps now - the shifting material softened, hardened, flaked, shattered in different places, she would catch the proper moment given enough time. Time. She glanced to the remaining man again. He had clasped his hands in front of himself and was looking on wide-eyed.

A low moaning began from some place deep and feral inside him. His jaw opened and closed a few times incidentally lowering and raising the pitch of his animalistic howl. "The light!" he called.

The witch immediately recognized his voice as the one calling while she'd been on the ramp.

"The light! I have seen, I will embrace! Oh Lord who can only be called Authority, He of All, Creator above All, I beg! I beg to do Your bidding always! Allow me the light! The light!" His cry continued into a frantic whine as he looked from the angels to the tree, hesitating over both.

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Edit: Yay! Thank you


	19. Holy Ones

Pressed into the corner at the rear of the small prayer room, quietly hugging his knees to his chest in the way of a child, door locked behind him, Enoch cried. He'd asked the angel to stay with Baruch when he'd first woken. His head still hurt in that new manner with pain pulsing together at both sides, intensifying as his head clogged and swelled with each sob. In the prayer room he could cry, where only The Authority would be witness to his shame. It had been days since Baruch had spoken with him in the orchard. Enoch had spent much of the time in his prayer room or silently assisting Jared in the orchards.

_And then Baruch had left...for the girl. He'd leave with her tonight, end of the horse fair, get away during the confusion of pulling down tents. She would pull him down further. Her pit. Already trapped inside its shadowed lining. Already fallen...The line._ The freezing points came once again at Enoch, wrapping around him, pressing all over his body in a cold embrace. He pulled himself quickly to his feet. _The line..._

The thought resounded, suddenly, harshly as if it came from outside himself. Enoch held his head to the side. _Protect the line. She would taint it. Protect it._

Lights spotted on either side of Enoch suddenly, flaring into existence a brilliant devouring whiteness and overlapping around his body to create deep pooling shadows underneath him. He fell to his knees as if the grand puppeteer aligning his body had collapsed suddenly in mimicry of years past. _Angel. Bene Elim, Holy Ones..._ He spoke the words lightly and bowed his head, dizzy from the newness of the lighted beings surrounding him. _Not Balthamos,_ of that he was certain.

"She will taint it." The words buzzed in his head, swarming to occupy every space so completely that he gasped for breath coming only with effort of reseizing its allocated right. _The beings were speaking to him!_

"Archangel." The word came to him. "Archangel. Protect the line. All value lies in goodness." A Darkness came before his eyes, so sudden that Enoch pressed his palms to the stone flooring to assure the firmness of the pure blackness he saw around him.

"Balthamos?" Enoch rasped. "Balthamos?" He tried again.

"I'll protect Baruch." His voice sounded weak in the room and he coughed heavily to disturb the small noise he'd made.

"Your time is now." The voice alone, no presence surrounded him.

Without hesitation, Enoch pulled himself to a firm stance. Baruch would be going to meet the girl soon. He would stop his brother._ For the line._


	20. Binds and Hems

Ruta Skadi continued her assault on the wrist bindings. She'd moved silently around so that she kept from the sight of the angels. A tooth scraped and cracked violently as a new shift brought it against a substance she spat at for its hardness and taste. She continued. Another attack left the top of her lips burned slightly from the clasp. Still, she clamped her jaw heavily around the strange triangle and brought her back molars down against it. The lower portion of her jaw came rapidly upward, sucking against a gooey material it bit through. The upper half of the triangle shattered in her mouth. She spit quickly as her hands flew apart, banged them rapidly into the walls prompting the remaining material to dislodge from her wrists. The majority of it peeled off into fibrous strands left on the walls. She rubbed the remainder away quickly with a spare edge of black silk, leaving smears along its hemline.

The man's howling elevated as the tree started to glow. Ruta Skadi quickly held her hands behind herself as the two angels came into visibility from behind the tree. Her only confidence that they would not notice was in their belief of her insignificance. She bit her lip in and sucked at the blood, tasting it strongly and relishing her life, imagining vividly the blood that coursed throughout her body.

The male angel spoke suddenly, directly toward Ruta Skadi. "You will see now, spy-witch." 


	21. The Message

The message had arrived with the angel earlier that day. Messenger, the name of the task; the task, the nature of the angel. Baruch would leave with the girl. He must go alone.

The task, the nature of the angel. Enoch had entrusted Balthamos with the task of protecting Baruch. Baruch. Human, the nature of wants and beliefs creating the person. _Want._ Balthamos puzzled again. _Want gave Baruch strength and passion. He'd changed..._ Was want a gift from The Authority to humans? He spoke the thought aloud quietly to the air he moved through, just as if he'd been asked by someone else; the answers would develop from voicing the question. _Want._ Balthamos let the idea of the feeling flow through his true being, wandering among the memories it took him to of his time with Enoch. E_noch wanted to please The Authority, wanted to build the temple, wanted to teach the people._ He was quickly satisfied that want could lead a person to The Authority. _Want._ He thought further. _Angel not only in nature, but want of that nature._ He also wanted to serve The Authority. He wanted to serve him in his task to Enoch. Enoch wanted him to protect Baruch.

One of the archangels had wanted Baruch to go alone to meet with Chisiya. He moved farther from the village through the air, swiftly passing from the familiar into the foreign parts of The Creator's lands. The angel moved onward, through a gap into another world where he stopped and took refuge from wandering amongst the thin high limbs of a dying forest. _Want._ Balthamos knew he had want now. He wanted to go back to Baruch.

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Chapter title from my favorite episode of my favorite TV series! Thanks Laseri!


	22. At Root's Scar

Onward. Baruch stepped lightly along the rows in the orchard toward the gully leading him to Chisiya. She'd be waiting. She promised. No thoughts of his courageous dusk adventure lined through his head now. Last year's hopeful stride had been replaced by a small twitch at the corner of his mouth - the worry which would only leave when they met. Chisiya would not be there. Chisiya was not to be trusted as he'd left himself to her. Chisiya had told the men he was coming. His worries lessened though when he thought back to the golden structure Balthamos had shown him in the tent - himself, different now.

For the better. Baruch thought. The beauty of what he'd seen could only be some kind of goodness in his perception. He hooked both thumbs behind the straps crisscrossing his chest. His familiar small rucksack had been left on his parent's bed. He'd told Jared he would be leaving, but hadn't said goodbye. The pack he hefted now had been filled lovingly in part by his mother - food stores and extra clothing. The straps pressed across his wide chest in unfamiliar ways, rubbing sore spots quickly down across his scar.

He kicked up dust clouds with each step, mentally commenting on the need for water. Baruch passed through olive trees, approaching on the scarred tree and reached a gentle hand out to it. The other hand he held across his own heart and closed his eyes. A prayer, for Enoch, for forgiveness. A prayer that the pain he would leave with his brother would heal, that the whole Balthamos spoke of would remain for Enoch - a floating streaming pureness of dazzling golden light, forever awing for Baruch to imagine. Enoch. Above others, to see Enoch like that would be something Baruch knew would be the greatest thrill. 

Baruch opened his eyes. An unbidden tear loosened itself down his face. Baruch would leave with her as he'd promised when they'd met yesterday. He was still unsure if he felt love for Chisiya, but what he felt confused him. Need for certainty pushed him to agree with her.

"Baruch!" He turned at the call. A smile spread quickly to replace any further thoughts of hesitation. He didn't call back but dropped his pack to the ground and walked to meet Chisiya as she waved at him and ran barefoot through the orchards, dark chestnut hair bound into a single braid down her back bouncing cheerfully behind. She didn't stop as they met. Colliding, she pounded against his chest, knocking him back a step where twigs from the olive tree poked against his head and the back of his neck.

"I love you!" Chisiya threw her head back and yelled wildly while wrapping her arms around Baruch.

"Chestnut mare!" He laughed and held her in return.

"You love me as well, don't you, Baruch? You must, we're running away together like this because we love each other. Because it's for love so it's good!" she paused a moment and smiled. "I brought horses for us to leave with. Lovely black mares, both of them. Brother was sold last season so you needn't worry," she added, watching the look cross his face at the mention of horses again. They laughed together as Baruch pulled away to re-gather his pack.

Chisiya stilled suddenly as his warmth left her. "Baruch, it's right, isn't it?" 

Baruch tilted his head from where he squatted, picking up the items fallen from his careless packing. 

"It's what has to happen, right? You need to keep running from the men from Egypt but you need someone to protect you also." 

"Yes," she said stiffly, "but why is it right then for you?" 

"Because I want to go with you," he said simply.

"Because you want to leave here?"

"Because you asked me to," Baruch finished and brushed some dirt from the pack while hefting it back onto his shoulders. He turned to find Chisiya beaming at him and felt that deep pull again inside him, relaxing against it knowing she smiled because of him.

"Let's ride." Chisiya offered a leading hand to Baruch and walked over to him. "I'll ride next to you this time."

Baruch returned the proffered reach and straightened to follow.

A rapid, heavy shuffling noise. Tree branches parted in a semicircle surrounding the pair. 

"Now that everyone has gathered..." A man stepped out from between the trees. Baruch recognized him immediately, the dim features of that night, then shockingly brilliant against Balthamos' glow. His shadow extended down to Baruch's feet where he shuddered and forced out a breath of stale air. "Balthamos," he whispered, "please." He stepped backward toward the scarred tree quickly, prepared to run where the semicircle opened, one hand still at his shoulder flexed in anticipation to throw his heavy pack at the man before him.

"All together, please," the man called loudly and waved, seeing Baruch's intention clearly. The remaining bend of the circle, Chisiya's group, closed the gap from the North, bringing someone walking between them.

"Enoch!" Baruch started suddenly as he recognized his brother. "Let him go, he's nothing to do with this!" He pointed to emphasize. Baruch turned again to see his brother calmly standing between three men, large, but not impossible. Jared's sons were both tall and strong from their working life. Enoch was uninjured, unrestrained, placid.

"It's all right now, Baruch." 

He spoke suddenly, strongly. The men around him glanced among each other with a passed smirk. "They asked me to go with them." Enoch's readings for The Authority had given him some peculiarities of speech which Baruch now thought of. Enoch meant someone else. Angels?

"Balthamos?" He mouthed the name to Enoch, but his brother's attention pierced suddenly over his shoulder and Baruch spun. A fist glanced across his lower abdomen in momentum sending his attacker into him sloppily as Baruch turned. He jumped backward, thankful for the quick motion but wary while the man recomposed himself. His ears pricked at the halted sounds of men awaiting orders around him.

"Right. Someone hold him."

"Please, don't!" Baruch shouted and pushed his arms out widely to hold back a group of approaching men. One jabbed a hand to knock him across the chin while two others dashed grabs at his moving limbs - caught his left arm as it fell suddenly weak at the shoulder - and twisted him around a circle where he stood. Something hot flared inside him and his throat burned to scream. Eyes wide, he twisted his neck quickly, looking, seeking, keep moving, thoughts rang to wild animals he'd see held in captivity. Someone else grabbed his right arm, slicked with the quick sweat of adrenaline; Baruch pulled himself away with a wrench and kicked out at the one who held his left arm - solidly locked under a massive double-elbowed clench like a vice. Baruch yelled in frustration for the man to let go. He was repaid in turn with a kick to the backs of his knees where he lost footing and the men pulled him to the tree behind him. A backhand across the face left his vision and thoughts swimming for the moment it took to slam him back against its scarred surface. He let out a short growl and continued kicking and pulled his weight forward to force his arms away.

He cried out again as he felt the rough grip of ropes coarse and prickled against his wrists. "Chisiya!" He called suddenly to the girl. She stood frozen where only minutes before she'd reached out to him. Her arms fell to her sides lightly and she watched blankly. No one moved to restrain her. "Please, I don't mean to harm her, she asked for me to leave with her here. We'll keep running, I can keep her safe!"

The man who had spoken - the leader - cocked his head to the side and glanced briefly from Chisiya to Baruch. "Are the knots sufficient?" No response came, but Baruch could feel the agreeing nod as the men stepped away from him leaving him shifting back and forth against the tree.

Baruch was no longer the focus of attention, and the leader of the group walked back to Chisiya to squeeze her roughly on the shoulder.

"Should we forgive you, Isi? Your preacher's here now." He aimed her at Enoch where she looked ahead as if the preceding capture of Baruch had left her stripped of the vitality the young man knew her by, her eyes held no awareness. She moved lightly forward as the man pushed her. Baruch watched and called her name repeatedly, straining against the ropes still. He planted both feet against the tree base and pushed his weight forward, squinting against the pain and twisting his shoulders around to see if the knots were giving in any direction. "Enoch!" he called, wondering somewhere that Enoch seemed so calm still. "Brother!"

Enoch smiled widely at the call. 

"Your temple seems to be in much better condition this year, preacher." Enoch nodded in agreement. "My men scouted during the fair. What's your Authority want with all that shine?" Chisiya stood midway between Enoch and the man.

"Good people in our village make offerings to sustain my work," Enoch said hesitantly, but remained confident.

"Offerings? You do sacrifice there now? Not what you told me in your back room." 

"Offerings of money, to maintain the growing temple and myself. People show their support of the Authority in this manner. In giving away their humanly sinful valuables they reach closer to The Authority, to His land, to Heaven."

He spoke in an increasingly fervent tone, ending loudly as if speaking back in the temple. His eyes shone with passion.

"You take your offerings in women, also?"

Enoch blinked, genuinely startled. A distracted foot slipped out from under Baruch and landed him solidly against the tree's base. His attention shifted.

"Nonsense," Enoch responded simply.

"Then if it wasn't you taking something for your authority, it was you taking something for yourself. You owe us for taking our woman."

"I would never - "

"Her! Her!" The man pointed solidly and enthusiastically at Chisiya. "You took our Isi to your back room and raped her - didn't you! Said it was your way, a cleansing!"

Enoch was visibly shaken. "She was in the prayer room with me for - "

"Exactly!" The leader cut him off again and threw his hands in the air. He moved the stance into a lazy walk around the inside of his circle of followers and continued loudly against Enoch's growing demands to speak. "What can we do with a man who owes us? Man's got some authority on his side, he says, we've got our rights here. Rapes women to take some payment to this higher authority. Let's see where the power is. You owe us," noises of approval came up from the circle as he moved his hands in agitation, "so you pay up for taking our whore..."

"I can't - " Enoch began in the space of a breath.

"...Or we'll kill your brother." The man ended the threat with a pleased grin growing over his face, teeth beaming in the enveloping darkness.

"You can't!" Enoch began with true panic spreading in his features, "he's part of the line, dating back to Seth! He's a good man,"

He had been pulled too far to sin already. Enoch was reminded. Whether from the Archangels surrounding him in wait or inside himself where the coldness rested simmering he could not distinguish.

"He's part of the line!" Enoch called again fiercely. 

"Enoch..." Baruch breathed closely against disbelief. He'd remained quiet as the accusations against his brother rose, until the growing dread could hold back no longer. "Enoch! Enoch!" he called, needed to understand... "It's not true, tell me! Chisiya!" He struggled more as he yelled.

Enoch kept his eyes forward while the circle quieted save Baruch's growing cries. The line, save the line he was reminded continuously and held his attention divided three ways. "It's true," he called back, unfocused. "Chisiya stays with these men as their whore."

Baruch sank agape back against the tree. His mind ran blank, eyes widening awkwardly to take in light which was not there. He'd wanted to leave with her, wanted to protect her. He watched the shell of Chisiya before him and felt a metallic heat surge through him, just as if the blade of the previous year cut at him again, searing as it went. It froze in the contradictions he plunged through mentally to look back to the brother before him.

"Your woman love's a whore, son!" someone amongst the throng droned in a high-pitched monotone.

Enoch... Enoch had known. Enoch had... He could consider the idea no further and cried out in agony. "Balthamos! Balthamos!" The darkness around him began drenching the land in its entirety. Baruch closed his eyes. "Balthamos!" His call continued and he imagined the coolness of the angel's touch replacing the heat of his anger, the dazzling light replacing the darkness around him. He thought of his mother, steadfast in lifting buckets of earth-chilled water from the well, a smile for her son. Jared - his father - strong, kind, fixing down poles for a lean-to over the neighbor's small livestock troughs.

Light. True light, flaring, vibrant in its glare. Baruch opened his eyes slightly in happiness. Screams rang around the orchard in a retreating circle. The cries halted and grew, altering with intensity. Baruch looked forward seeing only the brilliance before him.

"The line will be saved." A voice. "It must be removed from sin."

Enoch emerged resplendent before him, tendrils of the flowing substance draping around the brother's shoulders, forming a cape from which he glowed. "It's all right now, brother." Baruch shifted, Enoch's voice grew and rang inside his head until he groaned. Tears ran freely down Enoch's face as he began mumbling - one mountainous incantation Baruch could not understand. The dazzling radiance shifted around Enoch, cloying, tugging, caressing, a suffocating sheet of consistent vibrancy, nothing Baruch knew. Enoch held a hand out and in a piercing gleam of light, a sword appeared. Baruch flinched. The elder brother moved around the olive tree, exposing Baruch fully to the light in the vacuous wake he left. His hands were freed from the olive tree. Baruch stood up straight, chin held high, glowing brilliantly as Enoch had.

"It's all right now, brother." Enoch spoke from his side, voice normal now, calm again. Baruch looked to see his smile, filled with the love he knew. The lighted beings surrounding them grew brighter still, prickling gleams spooking, vibrating at the edges of Baruch's vision.

"Brother." He reached to embrace him, to forgive, to understand, to know just as always that Enoch was there - the man he could admire, would care for always, his brother. His movement halted in mid-extension with the most vicious softness the glowing oasis could offer.

Baruch fell to the ground at his brother's feet. 


	23. Unlock the Cube

The angel felled the blade with unwinding swiftness, hefting it lightly and cutting deeply, a rending sucking noise of flesh, muscle; a harsh flinch forced where it met bone. The being pulled back to allow the man to fall. He landed in an incredulous heap, stunned but conscious. Blood seeped freely from the carve down his shoulder, leaking an easily spreading lake through the fabric of his clothing, growing into a quiet pool underneath him. The wound was not fatal if properly attended, but he remained motionless. 

The second of the lighted beings reached out to touch the hewing blade - human-formed fingers lightly dipping against the vivid red there.

"Please..." the man called weakly, prostrate against the strange flooring. "The light!"

Ruta Skadi watched at her own distance, steeling her senses again for an assault of her will. The female angel cupped both hands around the blade of her companion's spear, running them up over its length to funnel the blood stains onto her palms. She spread them open at the witch with a smirk.

"Watch."

The angel moved jerkily to the pillar-tree in the center of the room, hands held in front. The lower portion now writhed as the upper branches calmed, clean man-made lines stretching and compressing. Anticipating. The witch could feel its nature vividly, like a well-fed kept beast; never complacent, never content, only satisfied in the moments of its feeding. The angel pushed her palms at its beguiling surface. Lines of red streaked away from her touch in patterns of intricate whorls, resonating, sweeping away up its surface through to the ends of even the least twigs. All in only a few seconds. The angel stepped back quickly, fluidly, reached to one of the remaining poles of the pentagram.

"Flawed." She spoke in a whisper the witch queen read from her lips, spun. The pole was lifted from its place - a spear at the end, exactly as the one held, still bloody, by her companion. The angel lifted, aimed, made a small noise for the man to look up from the floor.

He rolled onto his good right side, compliant with the aide of a spear butt poking against him. Pain-blurred eyes opened to a second spear, point-first.

The prayer came first. The man pulled both hands around underneath himself, pushing only with his right, legs scooting up around into a sitting kneel. He'd made nothing of an inclination to cover the wound, but the left hand brought a slow trickle of blood to his right as he clasped them into a prayer. He tilted visibly to the left where the gash opened ripping slowly further downward, a mockery, as if splitting down through the loosened seams at a stuffed doll. His entire arm began loosening, sliding away eerily from the cleavage left by the angelic weapon. Blood pulsed there. Muscle and bone began peeking into sight while the witch queen could only watch.

"Forgiveness—" the last request he would make.

The spear came at him, one deadly straight line blazing intention aimed directly at the growing edge of the opening wound - and passed cleanly through the wound length-wise - finding its target directly behind the man. The figure backed away, a shadow of a person, slowly dimming, clearly shocked. It was as if some masterful carpenter had taken his craft into forming man, allowing movement and expression, but developing colors only by the grains of his materials.

The solid man's eyes widened as he turned to find the second being standing with the angel. His arm fell away with a sudden vicious peeling, layers of skin and muscle tearing away with it. Perhaps the shock wore then, a wild bursting cry of agony left the man in a spasm. His remaining hand tore the air in reflex through the screams. Tears came, a torrent across his reddened face, he kept turning to watch the fading person behind him. Ruta Skadi clutched her own hands into balls behind her and leaned forward to relieve the physical nausea that she could - the soul-sinking sickness she felt would not leave as her easily. The cries continued hot and howling. The man gasped for breath accompanying the screams, coughing violently where the two interfered inside. His eyes pleaded heavily and the clawing hand came around grasping now, reaching to the shadow where it began falling to pieces from the ground up. It opened and closed its human-shaped mouth helplessly, watching itself as crumbles came away in small lines, disappearing fully against the floor there, falling as weightlessly as the most crystalline bits of snow fell lightly to the ground.

Ruta Skadi closed her eyes, brought the back of her wrist against her mouth. The fading figure was gone. The angels had watched silently throughout. The man in front of her collapsed to the floor again, gasping and crying.

"Stop," the angel behind him commanded.

He looked up in agitation, clearly divided between obeying the angel or the pain.

"My – my -!" He shrieked in an inhuman pitch and clutched at the wounded left half of his chest. Blood pushed against his fingers as they squelched unnaturally at bone, muscle, the cartilaginous spacing between ribs.

"You will not die. The Authority has chosen you, He has saved you." The female angel spoke a monotone of duty, gathered the fallen chunks of the man's body into a heap. He knelt, a puppet strung hanging with disbelief.

The clan queen shuddered at the sight before her. She had fought wars. Men did not live with wounds like these, not even for years, not for moments. The female Bene Elim returned to the pillar-tree where she tossed her gathered heap at it from a distance. Its lower portion opened with a noise as a vertical split appeared, eating from inside the column itself. The edges crept back like a mouth, folding back on itself with the scent of burning along its edges. The pile which had been part of the man disappeared into the opening. The split, in turn, rolled back into itself re-forming the solid-seeming lower pillar of the tree.

Flashes of violet ripped along the higher tree branches confirming for the witch what fate she had suspected for the light-featured man who had approached the tree. The violet radiance gathered into points spotting circles diametrically along some of the larger branches. The two angels replaced their spears to their allotted holes in the pentagram around the tree base. Red shiftings crawled and gained momentum to their speeds, dancing over the entire center structure.

The man coughed out a series of rough gasps and Ruta Skadi turned, expecting that the angels were wrong, that the man had died as he should. She found him leaned forward, reaching open-mouthed, to touch at a small flopping creature before him. A large bat. The clan queen felt herself flush over as she immediately recognized the piteous creature. _His dæmon_. It flapped onto its side, finding a voice and shrieking in agitation, pain, confusion - the witch could not read.

The man poked his dæmon in obvious wonder, glad even through the persistent pain he felt, wondering at its sudden appearance. Even though the people of his world had no visible dæmon, he felt some truth of its closeness to himself immediately.

The newly-visible dæmon flapped twice more and fell still. The tree began a new motion of light as the red shiftings grew into white-hot blazings surrounding its trunk. Small creepings of white light began ghosting into existence around the dæmon. It flapped a wing weakly, letting out small bat-shrieks in rhythm. Along the tree, the shiftings grew to create a complex pattern throughout the trunk, crossing into its fibrous innards to align, forming some ancient symbol with the top of the tree growing from inside itself. The flames grew whiter around the dæmon, moving and hopping through the creature to replicate the tree-symbol.

The man cried out, but didn't move toward his dæmon. The rapidity of motion increased, trebling in an instant. The rhythmic shriekings from the bat dæmon halted and were replaced by crackling noises. The dæmon within the symbol was aglow with the white lights, burning from inside itself. The lights become more massive, consuming the clarity from the dæmon and turning it slowly transparent. It moved slowly within the brilliance, turning in circles. The witch had been watching with all her attentions. She did not notice until the first call that the white shiftings around the dæmon had also begun consuming the man. He only called twice more after that, both times shouting a cheer of obvious glee, but with a grimace on his face where the clan queen could see some agony filling him from inside as the light ate through to the outermost fabric of his being, where both man and dæmon combined suddenly.

The blaze fell suddenly from the room, leaving Ruta Skadi momentarily without sight, drenched again in the fleeting light impressions left in her vision. And then, light. A weak light began as a brief glow in the space where man and dæmon had been. The glow was held aloft, the two captor angels on either side. A shifting in the room knocked the witch backward, but not from her feet. The branches of the tree withered and turned a deep grey, pockmarked with flecks of the deep violet, white - stains the lights had left seared onto the tree. Outermost points tipped backward and curled through tributaries to be sucked back into the heaviest limbs. Grating noises came from the lower pillared portion as it pulled the limbs back into itself, cracking small bits to the ground surrounding it as shifting-limb met shifting-limb.

Between them now, the two angels held a third lighted being - glowing faintly, light waning even as Ruta Skadi watched until it seemed to extinguish itself altogether.

"Angel," Ruta Skadi whispered the word lightly with realization. The new being in front of her pulsed out a faint glow before fading again. Her captors dropped their arms away simultaneously, disgustedly, from what they had been supporting. The being suddenly there, was just as suddenly not. _Metatron's Cube_. Her spirit rejoiced quietly. _They had failed. Asriel had no fear of an army from this. She would die here, but Asriel had not lost._


	24. Lost Heaven

Baruch was shivering, alone and drifting in and out of consciousness when Balthamos arrived. His blood had clotted neatly around the wound, sealing the sword in place where it pierced him through, leaking only occasionally when the muscles of his abdomen flexed in response to the growing chill. The ground at the roots of the olive tree behind him was stained the dark scarlet of dried blood. He shook back from the angel's touch as Balthamos cupped a hand against his chest, feeling the heart beat there. 

"Baruch." The cooling hand moved to touch the scar line across Baruch's shoulder. A new shiver brought a gout of blood up around the sword. "Baruch?" Balthamos pressed down on the young man's shoulder to no response. He pressed harder, both palms of his human-formed hands arcing down to the heels.

"Baruch," he murmured. "Why." His voice came out thin and strangled. A breeze passed over the tops of the olive trees. Ground lay tamped down with bustle in a circle spreading from the Baruch. Balthamos leaned over him to see the wound more closely, edges slowly seeping or clotting in a ring from the protruding weapon.

Deep in the orchards off the west of the village, horse tracks leading a beaten path away with the stench of too many men living too closely together, far lost to the cries of the rider, between rows of olive trees planted by a far-younger Jared and his barely-pregnant wife, a wail took to the air. Radiance filed in through the gaps of the surrounding trees, lit a flare in the darkness. Balthamos knelt, one hand to Baruch's slow-rising chest, the other on the hilt of a sword - a sword from one of the Archangels.

"No!" Balthamos struggled with disbelief, gripping fingers around the hilt of the sword.

"Balthamos?" Baruch spoke from his position; curled slightly into a ball in the dirt, long-since held by him as safest to slow the bleeding. Still, his eyes glazed with pain and weariness when Balthamos looked there.

"Baruch, you're awake!" Balthamos rushed his curled hand back, placed it to the young man's forehead where Baruch sighed to the cooling relief. "This shouldn't have..." Balthamos gestured, appalled, half at seeing Baruch closing his eyes again, half to recognize the handiwork before him. "Baruch!" He called loudly and put his hand back. Baruch reached to hold it there.

"Will I see you then?" Baruch questioned with some difficulty. "When I die?" The words squeaked out, to Balthamos' horror, a fresh flow of blood began from the wound. Baruch struggled against crying, the internal building sobs each forced down with a strain that reopened the bleeding.

"How do I stop - "

"There's nothing for it," Baruch cut him off shortly.

"But I need to heal it!" Balthamos cried in frustration. He could see the dimming in the young man's eyes, the defeat there. Baruch breathed out heavily, a sound like a cough. Blood at the corners of his mouth. A single tear fell. "Baruch! Baruch!" he called out in worry, completely in exasperation with the human body. A movement from Baruch, one only the angel could see. "Baruch!" Balthamos gasped.

The golden structure in front of him. A constant movement of forming, reforming, rippling beauty Balthamos watched - the same formations which awed him, confounded him, the curiosity and goodness he'd found in the human man - a single line plucked itself away hesitantly floating in one long golden string, and - as if its glorious musician traded a knife for a bow - split through the middle and instantly vanished through into the chaos of movement around it. Balthamos backed away, aghast. "Baruch!" he called.

The young man had closed his eyes again and would not respond to his touch. "Baruch!" The angel shook him. Another line of the golden formation moved away, flew from being part of Baruch to being part of all things which were not Baruch. The angel cried out, watched as another line loosened itself.

"No!" Balthamos yelled in anger and pushed outward, casing himself in his true form around the loosening formation he knew to be Baruch. The great sphere which Baruch had seen the angel as fell against the structure, holding, wrapping around it for support. Balthamos pushed further, enveloping Baruch. The structure still fell - Balthamos pulled tightly and watched another line snap in two, he grasped within the golden stream and watched small portions of his own being fall away into the motion of Baruch's escaping golden being.

His nature cried out, want, he understood. Balthamos tugged and pushed, pulling memories as he strove to influence the movement - now a small stream away from Baruch. He would dam it. Balthamos piled into his thoughts of Baruch, the man's curiosity, honest speaking, the things they'd discussed, their first meeting. More of the stream floated from him, clutching and tearing away Balthamos as it went. Balthamos could not feel; he forced down a slow panic and tried, begging with Baruch to remember the feelings of a human: touch, from the girl in the tent, the taste of figs in the marketplace, smell from his mother's kitchen - all things Balthamos could only guess at. He embraced the stream further even while it pulled at him, and cried out in desperation.

Despair Balthamos held to the new idea and pulled the stream to him tightly: despair when the girl left him, hurt from his wounded arm, joy. Joy everywhere, joy that would bring tears into the eyes of a man - Balthamos forced the stream to halt its movement. Joy: working with his father, the horse fair, a smile for the scarred olive nearby. Love. The stream began moving with purpose Balthamos could not trace. He held tighter, pushed harder, bits of him flew away. The angel knew want, knew those things from Baruch like curiosity and kindness, bravery, trueness of purpose. Love.

Balthamos let go.

The formation held.

Balthamos could know love. He formed the familiar man-like appearance of himself. The body in front of him relaxed, and Balthamos propped it against the scarred olive tree behind them. He pulled the sword away and held onto it. It took all the strength he had saved. The formation hung suspended in the air over the body that was Baruch. A different play of light began as the structure began shifting. Balthamos watched in awe, shining in a new external light.

Bits of light crept and clung to Baruch, serpent like, fleshing out the portions of him that would become. Twisting, they stretched and created upon him a mantle of their being, forming and melding to the body he had, creating anew, embracing the form and longing for life.

"Angel," he whispered, but not to the light, nor himself; but because the word must be spoken to endear itself to the world.

The angel stood anew, formed as the man he had been, and embraced his companion.

Balthamos responded in turn. A weakness enveloped him in the darkness as he'd never known, and he dropped the angelic weapon to the ground.

"Where will we go, Balthamos?" The new angel questioned through fresh need, the man he had been still feeling the pain, craving to understand. "Will we go to Heaven?"

"No." Balthamos strained against the question, biting back the bitterness he felt toward everything he'd known. A fresh regret for Baruch formed for a moment, _if not for Baruch.._. "It's a lie," he said. "For us, there is no Heaven, only here. We'll live like men for the goodness of living." He faced Baruch solidly, refreshed with the passion he knew he'd find there. "For us and for everything good we've known. We'll live like men in the worlds and dream as men cannot. We won't live for Him. I won't. Not any more." A sarcastic laugh bubbled through the angel and burst in the orchard as he beat familiar angelic wings to take flight. "Heaven is lost, Baruch. The dream of men we'll never have."

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Author notes:

Well I could write more than this, but I'm not sure what would be valuable to hear. Thank you for Laseri for editing my horrible mis-use of words (some of it I still used anyway because I feel words should be more like hefting a brick or lithely intertwining a whip round one's knuckles: both give immediate intentions and connotations, rather than scientific creatures of formula with which addition or subtraction can give meaning to) and in general my horrible-ness. And also thank you to anyone who's been along for the story here - I'm glad if you've enjoyed it and I'd love to talk more about it if you're inclined to seek that out.

I guess I do have something new in fanfiction planned out, but it's quite abnormal and will likely be another far off ending. And with only twelve hours until I will be seeing The Golden Compass movie a third time - although technically a midnight showing of its first day, I take my leave.


End file.
